SOCIALISM 

AND THE 


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GREAT  STATE 


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SOCIALISM 

AND 

THE  GREAT  STATE 

ESSAYS    IN    CONSTRUCTION 

BY 

H.  G.  WELLS,  FRANCES  EVELYN  WARWICK 
L.  G.  CHIOZZA  MONEY,  E.  RAY  LANKESTER 
C  J.  BOND,  E.  S.  P.  HAYNES,  CECIL  CHESTERTON 
CICELY  HAMILTON,  ROGER  FRY,  G  R  S.  TAYLOR 
CONRAD  NOEL,  HERBERT  TRENCH,  HUGH  P.  VOWLES 


J  1  J      , 


HARPER   6-   BROTHERS    PUBLISHERS 

NEW     YORK      AND      LONDON 

M  C  M  X  I  1 


80^14 


COPYRIGHT,    1911.    1912.    BY   HARPER   a    BROTHERS 


PRINTED    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES    OF   AMERICA 
PUBLISHED    MAY,    1912 


^ 


3  G7 

CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

Prefatory  Note        v 

I.  The  Past  and  the  Great  State i 

By  //.  C.   Wells 

II.  The  Great  State  and  the  Country-side  ....      47 

By  The  Countess  of  Warwick 

III.  Work  in  the  Great  State 67 

By  L.  G.  Chiozza  Money,  M.P. 

IV.  The  Making  of  New  Knowledge 121 

^  By  Sir  Ray  Lankester,  K.C.B.,  F.R.S. 

^      V.        Health  and  Healing  in  the  Great  State    .     .     .     141 

By  C.  J.  Bond,  F.R.C.S. 

VI.  Law  and  the  Great  State 181 

By  E.  S.  P.  Haynes 

VII.  Democracy  and  the  Great  State 195 

By  Cecil  Chesterton 

VIII.  Women  in  the  Great  State 219 

By  Cicely  Hamilton 

IX.  The  Artist  in  the  Great  State 249 

By  Roger  Fry 

X.  The  Present  Development  of  the  Great  State  .    273 
By  G.  R.  Stirling  Taylor 

XI.  A  Picture  of  the  Church  in  the  Great  State    .    301 
By   The  Rev.  Conrad  Noel 

XII.  The  Growth  of  the  Great  State 325 

By  Herbert  Trench 

XIII.  The  Tradition  of  the  Great  State 357 

By  Hugh  P.   Vowles 


s. 


ri 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

This  book  is  the  outcome  of  a  conversational  sug- 
gestion that  the  time  was  ripe  for  a  fresh  review  of 
our  general  ideas  of  social  organisation  from  the 
constructive  standpoint.  A  collection  of  essays  by- 
contemporaries  actively  concerned  with  various 
special  aspects  of  progress  was  proposed,  and  then 
the  project  was  a  little  enlarged  by  the  inclusion 
of  a  general  introduction  which  should  serve  as  a 
basis  of  agreement  among  the  several  writers.  This 
introduction,  which  is  now  the  first  paper  in  the 
volume,  was  written  and  copies  were  made  out  and 
sent  by  Lady  Warwick,  Mr.  Wells,  and  Mr.  Taylor 
(who  are  to  be  regarded  jointly  as  the  general 
editors)  to  various  friends  who  seemed  likely  to 
respond  and  participate,  and  this  book  came  into 
being.  A  sort  of  loose  unity  has  been  achieved  by 
this  method ;  but  each  writer  remains  only  responsible 
for  his  own  contribution,  and  the  reader  must  not 
fall  into  the  very  easy  mistake  of  confusing  essays 
and  suggestions  with  a  programme  We  were  not 
able  in  the  time  at  our  disposal  to  secure  a  sympa- 
thetic writer  upon  the  various  problems  arising  out 
of  racial  difference,  which  remain,  therefore,  outside 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

our  scope.  We  failed,  also,  to  secure  a  detached 
and  generalised  paper  upon  religion.  We  believe, 
however,  tha,t,  except  for  these  omissions,  we  are 
presenting  a  fairly  complete  picture  of  constructive 
social  ideals.  It  is  interesting  to  note  certain  juxta- 
positions; this  is  not  a  socialist  volume,  and  the  con- 
structive spirit  has  long  since  passed  beyond  the 
purely  socialist  range.  Neither  Sir  Ray  Lankester, 
nor  Mr.  Haynes  nor  Mr.  Fry  would  dream  of  calling 
himself  a  socialist;  the  former  two  would  quite 
readily  admit  they  were  individualists.  That  old  and 
largely  fallacious  antagonism  of  socialist  and  in- 
dividuaHst  is  indeed  dissolving  out  of  contemporary 

thought  altogether. 

E.  W. 

G.  R.  S.  T. 

H.  G.  W. 


THE    PAST    AND    THE    GREAT    STATE 

BY   H.  G.  WELLS 


SOCIALISM 

AND 

THE    GREAT    STATE 

I 

THE   PAST  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 


This  volume  of  essays  is  essentially  an  exercise  in 
restatement.  It  is  an  attempt  on  the  part  of  its 
various  writers  to  rephrase  their  attitude  to  con- 
temporary social  changes.  Each  writes,  it  must  be 
clearly  understood,  from  his  or  her  own  standpoint; 
there  is  little  or  no  effort  to  achieve  a  detailed  con- 
sistency, but  throughout  there  is  a  general  unanimity, 
a  common  conception  of  a  constructive  purpose. 
What  that  common  conception  is,  the  present  writer 
will  first  attempt  to  elucidate. 

In  order  to  do  so  it  is  convenient  to  coin  two  ex- 
pressions, and  to  employ  them  with  a  certain  defined 
intention.  They  are  firstly:  The  Normal  Social 
Life,  and  secondly:  The  Great  State.  Throughout 
this  book  these  expressions  will  be  used  in  accordance 
with  the  definitions  presently  to  be  given,  and  the 
fact  that  they  are  so  used  will  be  emphasized  by  the 

3 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

employment  of  capitals.  It  will  be  possible  for  any- 
one to  argue  that  what  is  here  defined  as  the  Normal 
Social  Life  is  not  the  normal  social  life,  and  that  the 

:  Great  State  is  indeed  no  state  at  all.  That  will  be 
an  argument  outside  the  range  delimited  by  these 
definitions. 

Now  what  is  intended  by  the  Normal  Social  Life 
here  is  a  type  of  human  association  and  employment, 
of  extreme  prevalence  and  antiquity,  which  ap- 
pears to  have  been  the  lot  of  the  enormous  majority 
of  human  beings  as  far  back  as  history  or  tradition 
or  the  vestiges  of  material  that  supply  our  concep- 
tions of  the  neolithic  period  can  carry  us.  It  has 
never  been  the  lot  of  all  humanity  at  any  time,  to- 
day it  is  perhaps  less  predominant  than  it  has  ever 
been,  yet  even  to-day  it  is  probably  the  lot  of  the 
greater  moiety  of  mankind. 

Essentially  this  type  of  association  presents  a 
localized  community,  a  community  of  which  the 
greater  proportion  of  the  individuals  are  engaged 

/  '  more  or  less  directly  in  the  cultivation  of  the  land. 
With  this  there  is  also  associated  the  grazing  or 
herding  over  wider  or  more  restricted  areas,  belong- 
ing either  collectively  or  discretely  to  the  commun- 
ity, of  sheep,  cattle,  goats,  or  swine,  and  almost 
always  the  domestic  fowl  is  a  commensal  of  man  in 
this  life.  The  cultivated  land  at  least  is  usually 
assigned,  temporarily  or  inalienably,  as  property  to 
specific  individuals,  and  the  individuals  are  grouped 
in  generally  monogamic  families  of  which  the  father 

4 


THE   PAST  AND   THE  GREAT  STATE 

is  the  head.  Essentially  the  social  unit  is  the 
Family,  and  even  where  as  in  Mahomedan  countries 
there  is  no  legal  or  customary  restriction  upon 
polygamy,  monogamy  still  prevails  as  the  ordinary 
way  of  living.  Unmarried  women  are  not  esteemed, 
and  children  are  desired.  According  to  the  dangers 
or  securities  of  the  region,  the  nature  of  the  culti- 
vation and  the  temperament  of  the  people,  this 
community  is  scattered  either  widely  in  separate 
steadings  or  drawn  together  into  villages.  At  one 
extreme,  over  large  areas  of  thin  pasture  this  agri- 
cultural community  may  verge  on  the  nomadic;  at 
another,  in  proximity  to  consuming  markets  it  may 
present  the  concentration  of  intensive  culture. 
There  may  be  an  adjacent  Wild  supplying  wood, 
and  perhaps  controlled  by  a  simple  forestry.  The 
law  that  holds  this  community  together  is  largely 
traditional  and  customary,  and  almost  always  as 
its  primordial  bond  there  is  some  sort  of  temple  and 
some  sort  of  priest.  Typically  the  temple  is  de- 
voted to  a  local  God  or  a  localized  saint,  and  its 
position  indicates  the  central  point  of  the  locality, 
its  assembly  place  and  its  market.  Associated 
with  the  agriculture  there  are  usually  a  few  imper- 
fectly vspecialised  tradesmen,  a  smith,  a  garment- 
maker  perhaps,  a  basket-maker  or  potter,  who 
group  about  the  church  or  temple.  The  community 
may  maintain  itself  in  a  state  of  complete  isolation, 
but  more  usually  there  are  tracks  or  roads  to  the 
centres   of   adjacent    communities,    and   a   certain 

S 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

drift  of  travel,  a  certain  trade  in  non-essential 
things.  In  the  fundamentals  of  life  this  normal 
community  is  independent  and  self-subsisting,  and 
where  it  is  not  beginning  to  be  modified  by  the  novel 
forces  of  the  new  times  it  produces  its  own  food  and 
drink,  its  own  clothing,  and  largely  intermarries 
within  its  limits. 

This  in  general  terms  is  what  is  here  intended 
by  the  phrase  the  Normal  Social  Life.  It  is  still 
the  substantial  part  of  the  rural  life  of  all  Europe 
and  most  Asia  and  Africa,  and  it  has  been  the  life 
of  the  great  majority  of  human  beings  for  imme- 
morial years.  It  is  the  root  life.  It  rests  upon  the 
soil,  and  from  that  soil  below  and  its  reaction  to  the 
seasons  and  the  moods  of  the  sky  overhead  have 
grown  most  of  the  traditions,  institutions,  senti- 
ments, beliefs,  superstitions,  and  fundamental  songs 
and  stories  of  mankind. 

But  since  the  very  dawn  of  history  at  least  this 
Normal  Social  Life  has  never  been  the  whole  com- 
plete life  of  mankind.  Quite  apart  from  the  mar- 
ginal life  of  the  savage  hunter,  there  have  been  a 
number  of  forces  and  influences  within  men  and 
women  and  without  that  have  produced  abnormal 
and  surplus  ways  of  living,  supplemental,  addi- 
tional, and  even  antagonistic  to  this  normal  scheme. 

And  first  as  to  the  forces  within  men  and  women. 
Long  as  it  has  lasted,  almost  universal  as  it  has 
been,  the  human  being  has  never  yet  achieved  a 
perfect   adaptation   to   the   needs   of   the   Normal 

6 


THE   PAST  AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

Social  Life.  He  has  attained  nothing  of  that  fric- 
tionless  fitting  to  the  needs  of  association  one  finds 
in  the  bee  or  the  ant.  Curiosity,  deep  stirrings  to 
wander,  the  still  more  ancient  inheritance  of  the 
hunter,  a  recurrent  distaste  for  labor,  and  resent- 
ment against  the  necessary  subjugations  of  family 
life  have  always  been  a  straining  force  within  the 
agricultural  community.  The  increase  of  popula- 
tion during  periods  of  prosperity  has  led  at  the 
touch  of  bad  seasons  and  adversity  to  the  desperate 
reliefs  of  war  and  the  invasion  of  alien  localities. 
And  the  nomadic  and  adventurous  spirit  of  man 
found  reliefs  and  opportunities  more  particularly 
along  the  shores  of  great  rivers  and  inland  seas. 
Trade  and  travel  began,  at  first  only  a  trade  in 
adventitious  things,  in  metals  and  rare  objects  and 
luxuries  and  slaves.  With  trade  came  writing  and 
money;  the  inventions  of  debt  and  rent,  usury  and 
tribute.  History  finds  already  in  its  beginnings  a 
thin  network  of  trading  and  slaving  flung  over  the 
world  of  the  Normal  Social  Life,  a  network  whose 
strands  are  the  early  roads,  whose  knots  are  the 
first  towns  and  the  first  courts. 

Indeed  all  recorded  history  is  in  a  sense  the  his- 
tory of  these  surplus  and  supplemental  activities  of 
mankind.  The  Normal  Social  Life  flowed  on  in 
its  immemorial  fashion,  using  no  letters,  needing 
no  records,  leaving  no  history.  Then,  a  little  mi- 
nority, bulking  disproportionately  in  the  record, 
come  the  trader  and  sailor,  the  slave,  the  landlord 

7 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

and  the  tax  -  compeller,  the  townsman  and  the 
king. 

All  written  history  is  the  story  of  a  minority  and 
their  peculiar  and  abnormal  affairs.  Save  in  so  far 
as  it  notes  great  natural  catastrophes  and  tells  of 
the  spreading  or  retrocession  of  human  life  through 
changes  of  climate  and  physical  conditions  it  re- 
solves itself  into  an  account  of  a  series  of  attacks 
and  modifications  and  supplements  made  by  exces- 
sive and  superfluous  forces  engendered  within  the 
community  upon  the  Normal  Social  Life.  The  very 
invention  of  writing  is  a  part  of  those  modifying 
developments.  The  Normal  Social  Life  is  essen- 
tially illiterate  and  traditional.  The  Normal  Social 
Life  is  as  mute  as  the  standing  crops;  it  is  as  sea- 
sonal and  cyclic  as  nature  herself,  and  reaches 
towards  the  future  only  an  intimation  of  continual 
repetitions. 

Now  this  human  over-life  may  take  either  benefi- 
cent or  maleficent  or  neutral  aspects  towards  the 
general  life  of  humanity.  It  may  present  itself  as 
law  and  pacification,  as  a  positive  addition  and 
superstructure  to  the  Normal  Social  Life,  as  roads 
and  markets  and  cities,  as  courts  and  unifying 
monarchies,  as  helpful  and  directing  religious  or- 
ganisations, as  literature  and  art  and  science  and 
philosophy,  reflecting  back  upon  the  individual  in 
the  Normal  Social  Life  from  which  it  arose,  a  gilding 
and  refreshment  of  new  and  wider  interests  and 
added   pleasures  and   resources.     One   may   define 

8 


THE   PAST  AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

certain  phases  in  the  history  of  various  countries 
when  this  was  the  state  of  affairs,  when  a  country- 
side of  prosperous  communities  with  a  healthy 
family  life  and  a  wide  distribution  of  property, 
animated  by  roads  and  towns  and  unified  by  a 
generally  intelligible  religious  belief,  lived  in  a 
transitory  but  satisfactory  harmony  under  a  sym- 
pathetic government.  I  take  it  that  this  is  the 
condition  to  which  the  minds  of  such  original  and 
vigorous  reactionary  thinkers  as  Mr.  G.  K.  Chester- 
ton and  Mr.  Hilaire  Belloc  for  example  turn,  as 
being  the  most  desirable  state  of  mankind. 

But  the  general  effect  of  history  is  to  present 
these  phases  as  phases  of  exceptional  good  luck, 
and  to  show  the  surplus  forces  of  humanity  as  on 
the  whole  antagonistic  to  any  such  equilibrium  with 
the  Normal  Social  Life.  To  open  the  book  of  his- 
tory haphazard  is,  most  commonly,  to  open  it  at 
a  page  where  the  surplus  forces  appear  to  be  in 
more  or  less  destructive  conflict  with  the  Normal 
Social  Life.  One  opens  at  the  depopulation  of 
Italy  by  the  aggressive  great  estates  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  at  the  impoverishment  of  the  French 
peasantry  by  a  too  centralised  monarchy  before 
the  revolution,  or  at  the  huge  degenerative  growth 
of  the  great  industrial  towns  of  western  Europe  in 
the  nineteenth  century.  Or  again  one  opens  at 
destructive  wars.  One  sees  these  surplus  forces 
over  and  above  the  Normal  Social  Life  working 
towards  unstable  concentrations  of  population,  to 

9 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

centralisation  of  government,  to  migrations  and 
conflicts  upon  a  large  scale;  one  discovers  the  proc- 
ess developing  into  a  phase  of  social  fragmenta- 
tion and  destruction  and  then,  unless  the  whole 
country  has  been  wasted  down  to  its  very  soil,  the 
Normal  Social  Life  returns  as  the  heath  and  furze 
and  grass  return  after  the  burning  of  a  common. 
But  it  never  returns  in  precisely  its  old  form.  The 
surplus  forces  have  always  produced  some  traceable 
change;  the  rhythm  is  a  little  altered.  As  between 
the  Gallic  peasant  before  the  Roman  conquest,  the 
peasant  of  the  Gallic  province,  the  Carlo vingian 
peasant,  the  French  peasant  of  the  thirteenth,  the 
seventeenth,  and  the  twentieth  centuries,  there  is,  in 
spite  of  a  general  uniformity  of  life,  of  a  common 
atmosphere  of  cows,  hens,  dung,  toil,  ploughing, 
economy,  and  domestic  intimacy,  an  effect  of  ac- 
cumulating generalising  influences  and  of  wider 
relevancies.  And  the  oscillations  of  empires  and 
kingdoms,  religious  movements,  wars,  invasions, 
settlements  leave  upon  the  mind  an  impression 
that  the  surplus  life  of  mankind,  the  less-localised 
life  of  mankind,  that  life  of  mankind  which  is  not 
directly  connected  with  the  soil  but  which  has 
become  more  or  less  detached  from  and  independent 
of  it,  is  becoming  proportionately  more  important 
in  relation  to  the  Normal  Social  Life.  It  is  as  if  a 
different  way  of  living  was  emerging  from  the 
Normal  Social  Life  and  freeing  itself  from  its 
traditions  and  limitations. 

lO 


THE   PAST  AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

And  this  is  more  particularly  the  effect  upon  the 
mind  of  a  review  of  the  history  of  the  past  two 
hundred  years.  The  little  speculative  activities  of 
the  alchemist  and  natural  philosopher,  the  little 
economic  experiments  of  the  acquisitive  and  enter- 
prising landed  proprietor,  favoured  by  unprecedented 
periods  of  security  and  freedom,  have  passed  into 
a  new  phase  of  extraordinary  productivity.  They 
have  added  preposterously  and  continue  to  add  on 
a  gigantic  scale  and  without  any  evident  Hmits  to 
the  continuation  of  their  additions,  to  the  resources 
of  humanity.  To  the  strength  of  horses  and  men 
and  slaves  has  been  added  the  power  of  machines 
and  the  possibility  of  economies  that  were  once 
incredible.  The  Normal  Social  Life  has  been  over- 
shadowed as  it  has  never  been  overshadowed  be- 
fore by  the  concentrations  and  achievements  of  the 
surplus  life.  Vast  new  possibilities  open  to  the 
race;  the  traditional  life  of  mankind,  its  traditional 
systems  of  association,  are  chahenged  and  threat- 
ened; and  all  the  social  thought,  all  the  political 
activity  of  our  time  turns  in  reality  upon  the  con- 
flict of  this  ancient  system  whose  essentials  we  have 
here  defined  and  termed  the  Normal  Social  Life 
with  the  still  vague  and  formless  impulses  that 
seem  destined  either  to  involve  it  and  men  in  a 
final  destruction  or  to  replace  it  by  some  new  and 
probably  more  elaborate  method  of  human  asso- 
ciation. 

Because  there  is  the  following  difference  between 

II 


SOCIALISM   AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

the  action  of  the  surplus  forces  as  we  see  them  to- 
day and  as  they  appeared  before  the  outbreak  of 
physical  science  and  mechanism.  Then  it  seemed 
clearly  necessary  that  whatever  social  and  political 
organisation  developed,  it  must  needs  rest  ulti- 
mately on  the  tiller  of  the  soil,  the  agricultural 
holding,  and  the  Normal  Social  Life.  But  now  even 
in  agriculture  huge  wholesale  methods  have  appeared. 
They  are  declared  to  be  destructive;  but  it  is  quite 
conceivable  that  they  may  be  made  ultimately  as 
recuperative  as  that  small  agriculture  which  has 
hitherto  been  the  inevitable  social  basis.  If  that 
is  so,  then  the  new  ways  of  living  may  not  simply 
impose  themselves  in  a  growing  proportion  upon 
the  Normal  Social  Life,  but  they  may  even  oust  it 
and  replace  it  altogether.  Or  they  may  oust  it  and 
fail  to  replace  it.  In  the  newer  countries  the 
Normal  Social  Life  does  not  appear  to  establish 
itself  at  all  rapidly.  No  real  peasantry  appears  in 
either  America  or  Australia;  and  in  the  older  coun- 
tries, unless  there  is  the  most  elaborate  legislative 
and  fiscal  protection,  the  peasant  population  wanes 
before  the  large  farm,  the  estate,  and  overseas 
production. 

Now  most  of  the  political  and  social  discussion 
of  the  last  hundred  years  may  be  regarded  and  re- 
phrased as  an  attempt  to  apprehend  this  defensive 
struggle  of  the  Normal  Social  Life  against  waxing 
novelty  and  innovation,  and  to  give  a  direction  and 
guidance  to  all  of  us  who  participate.     And  it  is 

12 


THE   PAST  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

very  largely  a  matter  of  temperament  and  free 
choice  still,  just  where  we  shall  decide  to  place  our- 
selves. Let  us  consider  some  of  the  key  words  of 
contemporary  thought,  such  as  Liberalism,  Indi- 
vidualism, Socialism,  in  the  light  of  this  broad 
generalisation  we  have  made;  and  then  we  shall 
find  it  easier  to  explain  our  intention  in  employing 
as  a  second  technicality  the  phrase  of  The  Great 
State  as  an  opposite  to  the  Normal  Social  Life, 
which  we  have  already  defined. 

II 

The  Normal  Social  Life  has  been  defined  as  one 
based  on  agriculture,  traditional  and  essentially  un- 
changing. It  has  needed  no  toleration  and  dis- 
played no  toleration  for  novelty  and  strangeness. 
Its  beliefs  have  been  of  such  a  nature  as  to  justify 
and  sustain  itself,  and  it  has  had  an  intrinsic  hos- 
tility to  any  other  beliefs.  The  god  of  its  com- 
munity has  been  a  jealous  god  even  when  he  was 
only  a  tribal  and  local  god.  Only  very  occasion- 
ally in  history  until  the  coming  of  the  modern 
period  do  we  find  any  human  community  relaxing 
from  this  ancient  and  more  normal  state  of  entire 
intolerance  towards  ideas  or  practices  other  than 
its  own.  When  toleration  and  a  receptive  attitude 
towards  alien  ideas  was  manifested  in  the  Old  World, 
it  was  at  some  trading  centre  or  political  centre; 
new  ideas  and  new  religions  came  by  water  along 
2  13 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

the  trade  routes.  And  such  toleration  as  there  was 
rarely  extended  to  active  teaching  and  propaganda. 
Even  in  liberal  Athens  the  hemlock  was  in  the  last 
resort  at  the  service  of  the  ancient  gods  and  the 
ancient  morals  against  the  sceptical  critic. 

But  with  the  steady  development  of  innovating 
forces  in  human  affairs,  there  has  actually  grown  up 
a  cult  of  receptivity,  a  readiness  for  new  ideas,  a 
faith  in  the  probable  truth  of  novelties.  LiberaHsm 
— I  do  not  of  course  refer  in  any  way  to  the  political 
party  which  makes  this  profession — is  essentially 
anti-traditionaHsm ;  its  tendency  is  to  commit  for 
trial  any  institution  or  belief  that  is  brought  before 
it.  It  is  the  accuser  and  antagonist  of  all  the  fixed 
and  ancient  values  and  imperatives  and  prohibi- 
tions of  the  Normal  Social  Life.  And  growing  up 
in  relation  to  Liberalism  and  sustained  by  it  is  the 
great  body  of  scientific  knowledge,  which  professes 
at  least  to  be  absolutely  undogmatic  and  perpet- 
ually on  its  trial  and  under  assay  and  re-examination. 

Now  a  very  large  part  of  the  advanced  thought 
of  the  past  century  is  no  more  than  the  confused 
negation  of  the  broad  beliefs  and  institutions  which 
have  been  the  heritage  and  social  basis  of  humanity 
for  immemorial  years.  This  is  as  true  of  the  ex- 
tremest  Individualism  as  of  the  extremest  Socialism. 
The  former  denies  that  element  of  legal  and  cus- 
tomary control  which  has  always  subdued  the  in- 
dividual to  the  needs  of  the  Normal  Social  Life, 
and  the  latter  that  qualified  independence  of  dis- 

14 


THE   PAST  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

tributed  property  which  is  the  basis  of  family 
autonomy.  Both  are  movements  against  the  an- 
cient life,  and  nothing  is  more  absurd  than  the 
misrepresentation  which  presents  either  as  a  con- 
servative force.  They  are  two  divergent  schools 
with  a  common  disposition  to  reject  the  old  and 
turn  towards  the  new.  The  Individualist  professes 
a  faith  for  which  he  has  no  rational  evidence,  that 
the  mere  abandonment  of  traditions  and  controls 
must  ultimately  produce  a  new  and  beautiful  social 
order;  while  the  Socialist,  with  an  equal  liberaHsm, 
regards  the  outlook  with  a  kind  of  hopeful  dread 
and  insists  upon  an  elaborate  legal  readjustment, 
a  new  and  untried  scheme  of  social  organisation  to 
replace  the  shattered  and  weakening  Normal  Social 
Life. 

Both  these  movements,  and  indeed  all  movements 
that  are  not  movements  for  the  subjugation  of  in- 
novation and  the  restoration  of  tradition,  are  vague 
in  the  prospect  they  contemplate.  They  produce 
no  definite  forecasts  of  the  quality  of  the  future 
towards  which  they  so  confidently  indicate  the  way. 
But  this  is  less  true  of  modern  sociaHsm  than  of 
its  antithesis,  and  it  becomes  less  and  less  true  as 
socialism,  under  an  enormous  torrent  of  criticism, 
slowly  washes  itself  clean  from  the  mass  of  partial 
statement,  hasty  misstatement,  sheer  error  and 
presumption,  that  obscured  its  first  emergence. 

But  it  is  well  to  be  very  clear  upon  one  point  at 
this  stage,  and  that  is,  that  this  present  time  is  not 

IS 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

a  battle-ground  between  individualism  and  social- 
ism; it  is  a  battle-ground  between  the  Normal 
Social  Life  on  the  one  hand  and  a  complex  of  forces 
on  the  other  which  seek  a  form  of  replacement  and 
seem  partially  to  find  it  in  these  and  other  doctrines. 

Nearly  all  contemporary  thinkers  who  are  not 
too  muddled  to  be  assignable  fall  into  one  of  three 
classes,  of  which  the  third  we  shall  distinguish  is 
the  largest  and  most  various  and  divergent.  It 
will  be  convenient  to  say  a  little  of  each  of  these 
classes  before  proceeding  to  a  more  particular  ac- 
count of  the  third.  Our  analysis  will  cut  across 
many  'accepted  classifications,  but  there  will  be 
ample  justification  for  this  rearrangement.  All  of 
them  may  be  dealt  with  quite  justly  as  accepting 
the  general  account  of  the  historical  process  which 
is  here  given. 

Then  first  we  must  distinguish  a  series  of  writers 
and  thinkers  which  one  may  call — the  word  con- 
servative being  already  politically  assigned — the 
Conservators. 

These  are  people  who  really  do  consider  the 
Normal  Social  Life  as  the  only  proper  and  desirable 
life  for  the  great  mass  of  humanity,  and  they  are 
fully  prepared  to  subordinate  all  exceptional  and 
surplus  lives  to  the  moral  standards  and  limitations 
that  arise  naturally  out  of  the  Normal  Social  Life. 
They  desire  a  state  in  which  property  is  widely 
distributed,  a  community  of  independent  families 
protected  by  law   and   an   intelligent    democratic 

i6 


THE   PAST  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

statecraft  from  the  economic  aggressions  of  large 
accumulations,  and  linked  by  a  common  religion. 
Their  attitude  to  the  forces  of  change  is  necessarily 
a  hostile  attitude.  They  are  disposed  to  regard 
innovations  in  transit  and  machinery  as  undesir- 
able, and  even  mischievous  disturbances  of  a  whole- 
some equilibrium.  They  are  at  least  unfriendly  to 
any  organisation  of  scientific  research,  and  scornful 
of  the  pretensions  of  science.  Criticisms  of  the 
methods  of  logic,  scepticism  of  the  more  widely 
diffused  human  beliefs,  they  would  classify  as  in- 
sanity. Two  able  English  writers,  Mr.  G.  K. 
Chesterton  and  Mr.  Belloc,  have  given  the  clearest 
expression  to  this  system  of  ideals,  and  stated  an 
admirable  case  for  it.  They  present  a  conception 
of  vinous,  loudly  singing,  earthy,  toiling,  custom- 
ruled,  wholesome,  and  insanitary  men;  they  are 
pagan  in  the  sense  that  their  hearts  are  with  the 
villagers  and  not  with  the  townsmen.  Christian  in 
the  spirit  of  the  parish  priest.  There  are  no  other 
Conservators  so  clear-headed  and  consistent.  But 
their  teaching  is  merely  the  logical  expression  of  an 
enormous  amount  of  conservative  feeling.  Vast 
multitudes  of  less  lucid  minds  share  their  hostility 
to  novelty  and  research;  hate,  dread,  and  are  eager 
to  despise  science,  and  glow  responsive  to  the  warm, 
familiar  expressions  of  primordial  feelings  and  im- 
memorial prejudices.  The  rural  conservative,  the 
liberal  of  the  allotments  and  small-holdings  type, 
Mr.    Roosevelt — in    his  Western-farmer,    philopro- 

17 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

genitive  phase  as  distinguished  from  the  phase  of 
his  more  imperialist  moments — all  present  them- 
selves as  essentially  Conservators,  as  seekers  after 
and  preservers  of  the  Normal  Social  Life. 

So,  too,  do  Socialists  of  the  William  Morris  type. 
The  mind  of  William  Morris  was  profoundly  re- 
actionary. He  hated  the  whole  trend  of  later 
nineteenth  -  century  modernism  with  the  hatred 
natural  to  a  man  of  considerable  scholarship  and 
intense  aesthetic  sensibilities.  His  mind  turned, 
exactly  as  Mr.  Belloc's  turns,  to  the  finished  and 
enriched  Normal  Social  Life  of  western  Europe  in 
the  middle  ages,  but  unlike  Mr.  Belloc  he  believed 
that,  given  private  ownership  of  land  and  the  ordi- 
nary materials  of  life,  there  must  necessarily  be  an 
aggregatory  process,  usury,  expropriation,  the  de- 
velopment of  an  exploiting  wealthy  class.  He  be- 
lieved profit  was  the  devil.  His  News  from  No- 
where pictures  a  communism  that  amounted  in  fact 
to  little  more  than  a  system  of  private  ownership 
of  farms  and  trades  without  money  or  any  buying 
and  selling,  in  an  atmosphere  of  geniality,  generosity, 
and  mutual  helpfulness.  Mr.  Belloc,  with  a  harder 
grip  upon  the  realities  of  life,  would  have  the  widest 
distribution  of  proprietorship,  with  an  alert  demo- 
cratic government  continually  legislating  against  the 
protean  reappearances  of  usury  and  accumulation, 
and  attacking,  breaking  up,  and  redistributing  any 
large  unanticipated  bodies  of  wealth  that  appeared. 
But  both  men  are  equally  set  towards  the  Normal 

i8 


THE   PAST  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

Social  Life,  and  equally  enemies  of  the  New.  The 
so-called  "socialist"  land  legislation  of  New  Zea- 
land again  is  a  tentative  towards  the  realisation  of 
the  same  school  of  ideas:  great  estates  are  to  be 
automatically  broken  up,  property  is  to  be  kept 
disseminated;  a  vast  amount  of  political  speaking 
and  writing  in  America  and  throughout  the  world 
enforces  one's  impression  of  the  wide-spread  influ- 
ence of  Conservator  ideals. 

Of  course  it  is  inevitable  that  phases  of  prosperity 
for  the  Normal  Social  Life  will  lead  to  phases  of 
overpopulation  and  scarcity,  there  will  be  occasional 
famines  and  occasional  pestilences  and  plethoras  of 
vitality  leading  to  the  blood-letting  of  war.  I  sup- 
pose Mr.  Chesterton  and  Mr.  Belloc  at  least  have 
the  courage  of  their  opinions,  and  are  prepared  to 
say  that  such  things  always  have  been  and  always 
must  be;  they  are  part  of  the  jolly  rhythms  of  the 
human  lot  under  the  sun,  and  are  to  be  taken  with 
the  harvest  home  and  love-making  and  the  peaceful 
ending  of  honoured  lives  as  an  integral  part  of  the 
unending  drama  of  mankind. 

Ill 

Now  opposed  to  the  Conservators  are  all  those 
who  do  not  regard  contemporary  humanity  as  a 
final  thing  nor  the  Normal  Social  Life  as  the  in- 
evitable basis  of  human  continuity.  They  believe 
in  secular  change,  in  Progress,  in  a  future  for  our 

19 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

species  differing  continually  more  from  its  past. 
On  the  whole,  they  are  prepared  for  the  gradual 
disentanglement  of  men  from  the  Normal  Social 
Life  altogether,  and  they  look  for  new  ways  of 
living  and  new  methods  of  human  association  with 
a  certain  adventurous  hopefulness. 

Now  this  second  large  class  does  not  so  much 
admit  of  subdivision  into  two  as  present  a  great 
variety  of  intermediaries  between  two  extremes.  I 
propose  to  give  distinctive  names  to  these  extremes, 
with  the  very  clear  proviso  that  they  are  not  an- 
tagonised, and  that  the  great  multitude  of  this 
second,  anti-conservator  class,  this  liberal,  more 
novel  class  modern  conditions  have  produced,  falls 
between  them,  and  is  neither  the  one  nor  the  other, 
but  partaking  in  various  degrees  of  both.  On  the 
one  hand,  then,  we  have  that  type  of  mind  which  is 
irritated  by  and  distrustful  of  all  collective  pro- 
ceedings, which  is  profoundly  distrustful  of  churches 
and  states,  which  is  expressed  essentially  by  Indi- 
vidualism. The  Individualist  appears  to  regard  the 
extensive  disintegrations  of  the  Normal  Social  Life 
that  are  going  on  to-day  with  an  extreme  hopeful- 
ness. Whatever  is  ugly  or  harsh  in  modern  indus- 
trialism or  in  the  novel  social  development  of  our 
time  he  seems  to  consider  as  a  necessary  aspect  of 
a  process  of  selection  and  survival,  whose  tendencies 
are  on  the  whole  inevitably  satisfactory.  The  fu- 
ture welfare  of  man  he  believes  in  effect  may  be 
trusted  to  the  spontaneous  and  planless  activities 

20 


THE   PAST  AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

of  people  of  good-will,  and  nothing  but  state  inter- 
vention can  effectively  impede  its  attainment.  And 
curiously  close  to  this  extreme  optimistic  school  in 
its  moral  quality  and  logical  consequences,  though 
contrasting  widely  in  the  sinister  gloom  of  its  spirit, 
is  the  socialism  of  Karl  Marx.  He  declared  the 
contemporary  world  to  be  a  great  process  of  financial 
aggrandisement  and  general  expropriation,  of  in- 
creasing power  for  the  few  and  of  increasing  hard- 
ship and  misery  for  the  many,  a  process  that  would 
go  on  until  at  last  a  crisis  of  unendurable  tension 
would  be  reached  and  the  social  revolution  ensue. 
The  world  had  in  fact  to  be  worse  before  it  could 
hope  to  be  better.  He  contemplated  a  continually 
exacerbated  Class  War,  with  a  millennium  of  ex- 
traordinary vagueness  beyond  as  the  reward  of  the 
victorious  workers.  His  common  quality  with  the 
Individualist  lies  in  his  repudiation  of  and  antago- 
nism to  plans  and  arrangements,  in  his  belief  in  the 
overriding  power  of  Law.  Their  common  influence 
is  the  discouragement  of  collective  understandings 
upon  the  basis  of  the  existing  state.  Both  converge 
in  practice  upon  laissez  faire.  I  would  therefore 
lump  them  together  under  the  term  of  Planless 
Progressives,  and  I  would  contrast  with  them  those 
types  which  believe  supremely  in  systematised 
purpose. 

The  purposeful  and  systematic  types,  in  common 
with  the  Individualist  and  Marxist,  regard  the 
Normal  Social  Life,  for  all  the  many  thousands  of 

21 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

years  behind  it,  as  a  phase,  and  as  a  phase  which  is 
now  passing,  in  human  experience;  and  they  are 
prepared  for  a  future  society  that  may  be  ultimately 
different  right  down  to  its  essential  relationships 
from  the  human  past.  But  they  also  beHeve  that 
the  forces  that  have  been  assailing  and  disintegrat- 
ing the  Normal  Social  Life,  which  have  been,  on  the 
one  hand,  producing  great  accumulations  of  wealth, 
private  freedom,  and  ill-defined,  irresponsible  and 
socially  dangerous  power,  and,  on  the  other,  labour 
hordes,  for  the  most  part  urban,  without  any 
property  or  outlook  except  continuous  toil  and 
anxiety,  which  in  England  have  substituted  a  dis- 
chargeable agricultural  labourer  for  the  independent 
peasant  almost  completely,  and  in  America  seem  to 
be  arresting  any  general  development  of  the  Normal 
Social  Life  at  all,  are  forces  of  wide  and  indefinite 
possibility  that  need  to  be  controlled  by  a  collective 
effort  implying  a  collective  design,  deflected  from 
merely  injurious  consequences  and  organised  for  a 
new  human  welfare  upon  new  lines.  They  agree 
with  that  class  of  thinking  I  have  distinguished  as 
the  Conservators  in  their  recognition  of  vast  con- 
temporary disorders  and  their  denial  of  the  essen- 
tial beneficence  of  change.  But  while  the  former 
seem  to  regard  all  novelty  and  innovation  as  a  mere 
inundation  to  be  met,  banked  back,  defeated  and 
survived,  these  more  hopeful  and  adventurous 
minds  would  rather  regard  contemporary  change  as 
amounting  on  the  whole  to  the  tumultuous  and 

22 


THE   PAST  AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

almost  catastrophic  opening-up  of  possible  new 
channels,  the  violent  opportunity  of  vast  deep  new 
ways  to  great  unprecedented  human  ends,  ends 
that  are  neither  feared  nor  evaded. 

Now,  while  the  Conservators  are  continually 
talking  of  the  "eternal  facts"  of  human  life  and 
human  nature  and  falling  back  upon  a  conception 
of  permanence  that  is  continually  less  true  as  our 
perspectives  extend,  these  others  are  full  of  the 
conception  of  adaptation,  of  deliberate  change  in 
relationship  and  institution  to  meet  changing  needs. 
I  would  suggest  for  them,  therefore,  as  opposed  to 
the  Conservators  and  contrasted  with  the  Planless 
Progressives,  the  name  of  Constructors.  They  are 
the  extreme  right,  as  it  were,  while  the  Planless 
Progressives  are  the  extreme  left  of  Anti-Conserva- 
tor thought. 

I  believe  that  these  distinctions  I  have  made 
cover  practically  every  clear  form  of  contemporary 
thinking  and  are  a  better  and  more  helpful  classi- 
fication than  any  now  current.  But  of  course  nearly 
every  individual  nowadays  is  at  least  a  little  con- 
fused, and  will  be  found  to  wobble  in  the  course 
even  of  a  brief  discussion  between  one  attitude  and 
the  other.  This  is  a  separation  of  opinions  rather 
than  of  persons.  And  particularly  that  word  So- 
cialism has  become  so  vague  and  incoherent  that 
for  a  man  to  call  himself  a  socialist  nowadays  is  to 
give  no  indication  whatever  whether  he  is  a  Con- 
servator like  William  Morris,  a  non-Constructor  like 

23 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

Karl  Marx,  or  a  Constructor  of  any  of  half  a  dozen 
different  schools.  On  the  whole,  however,  modern 
socialism  tends  to  fall  towards  the  Conservative 
wing.  So,  too,  do  those  various  movements  in 
England  and  Germany  and  France  called  variously 
nationalist  and  imperialist,  and  so  do  the  American 
civic  and  social  reformers.  All  these  movements 
are  agreed  that  the  world  is  progressive  towards  a 
novel  and  unprecedented  social  order,  not  neces- 
sarily and  fatally  better,  and  that  it  needs  organised 
and  even  institutional  guidance  thither,  however 
much  they  differ  as  to  the  form  that  order  should 
assume. 

For  the  greater  portion  of  a  century  socialism  has 
been  before  the  world,  and  it  is  not  perhaps  prema- 
ture to  attempt  a  word  or  so  of  analysis  of  that 
great  movement  in  the  new  terms  we  are  here 
employing.  The  origins  of  the  socialist  idea  were 
complex  and  multifarious,  never  at  any  time  has 
it  succeeded  in  separating  out  a  statement  of  itself 
that  was  at  once  simple,  complete,  and  acceptable 
to  any  large  proportion  of  those  who  call  themselves 
socialists.  But  always  it  has  pointed  to  two  or 
three  definite  things.  The  first  of  these  is  that 
unlimited  freedoms  of  private  property,  with  in- 
creasing facilities  of  exchange,  combination,  and 
aggrandisement,  become  more  and  more  dangerous 
to  human  liberty  by  the  expropriation  and  reduction 
to  private  wages  slavery  of  larger  and  larger  pro- 
portions of  the  population.     Every  school  of  social- 

24 


THE   PAST  AND   THE  GREAT  STATE 

ism  states  this  in  some  more  or  less  complete  form, 
however  divergent  the  remedial  methods  suggested 
by  the  different  schools.  And  next  every  school  of 
socialism  accepts  the  concentration  of  management 
and  property  as  necessary,  and  declines  to  con- 
template what  is  the  typical  Conservator  remedy, 
its  re-fragmentation.  Accordingly  it  sets  up  not 
only  against  the  large  private  owner,  but  against 
owners  generally,  the  idea  of  a  public  proprietor, 
the  State,  which  shall  hold  in  the  collective  interest. 
But  where  the  earlier  socialisms  stopped  short  and 
where  to  this  day  socialism  is  vague,  divided,  and 
unprepared,  is  upon  the  psychological  problems 
involved  in  that  new  and  largely  unprecedented 
form  of  proprietorship,  and  upon  the  still  more 
subtle  problems  of  its  attainment.  These  are  vast, 
and  profoundly,  widely,  and  multitudinously  diffi- 
cult problems,  and  it  was  natural  and  inevitable 
that  the  earlier  socialists  in  the  first  enthusiasm  of 
their  idea  should  minimise  these  difficulties,  pre- 
tend in  the  fulness  of  their  faith  that  partial  answers 
to  objections  were  complete  answers,  and  display 
the  common  weaknesses  of  honest  propaganda  the 
whole  world  over.  Socialism  is  now  old  enough  to 
know  better.  Few  modern  socialists  present  their 
faith  as  a  complete  panacea,  and  most  are  now 
setting  to  work  in  earnest  upon  these  long-shirked 
preliminary  problems  of  human  interaction  through 
which  the  vital  problem  of  a  collective  head  and 
brain  can  alone  be  approached.     This  present  vol- 

25 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

ume  is  almost  entirely  the  work  of  writers,  still  for 
the  most  part  calling  themselves  socialists,  who 
have  come  to  this  stage  of  admission. 

A  considerable  proportion  of  the  socialist  move- 
ment remains,  as  it  has  been  from  the  first,  vaguely- 
democratic.  It  points  to  collective  ownership  with 
no  indication  of  the  administrative  scheme  it  con- 
templates to  realise  that  intention.  Necessarily  it 
remains  a  formless  claim  without  hands  to  take 
hold  of  the  thing  it  desires.  Indeed,  in  a  large 
number  of  cases  it  is  scarcely  more  than  a  resentful 
consciousness  in  the  expropriated  masses  of  social 
disintegration.  It  spends  its  force  very  largely  in 
mere  revenges  upon  property  as  such,  attacks  sim- 
ply destructive  by  reason  of  the  absence  of  any 
definite  ulterior  scheme.  It  is  an  ill-equipped  and 
planless  belligerent  who  must  destroy  whatever  he 
captures  because  he  can  neither  use  nor  take  away. 
A  council  of  democratic  socialists  in  possession  of 
London  would  be  as  capable  of  an  orderly  and  sus- 
tained administration  a§  the  Anabaptists  in  Mun- 
ster.  But  the  discomforts  and  disorders  of  our 
present  planless  system  do  tend  steadily  to  the 
development  of  this  crude  socialistic  spirit  in  the 
mass  of  the  proletariat;  merely  vindictive  attacks 
upon  property,  sabotage,  and  the  general  strike  are 
the  logical  and  inevitable  consequences  of  an  un- 
controlled concentration  of  property  in  a  few  hands, 
and  such  things  must  and  will  go  on,  the  deep 
undertone  in  the  deliquescence  of  the  Normal  Social 

26 


THE   PAST  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

Life,  until  a  new  justice,  a  new  scheme  of  compen- 
sations and  satisfactions  is  attained,  or  the  Normal 
Social  Life  re-emerges. 

Fabian  socialism  was  the  first  systematic  attempt 
to  meet  the  fatal  absence  of  administrative  schemes 
in  the  earlier  socialisms.  It  can  scarcely  be  re- 
garded now  as  anything  but  an  interesting  failure, 
but  a  failure  that  has  all  the  educational  value  of 
a  first  reconnaissance  into  unexplored  territory. 
Starting  from  that  attack  on  aggregating  property, 
which  is  the  common  starting-point  of  all  socialist 
projects,  the  Fabians,  appalled  at  the  obvious  diffi- 
culties of  honest  confiscation  and  an  open  transfer 
from  private  to  public  hands,  conceived  the  ex- 
traordinary idea  of  filching  property  for  the  state. 
A  small  body  of  people  of  extreme  astuteness  were 
to  bring  about  the  municipalisation  and  nationalisa- 
tion first  of  this  great  system  of  property  and  then 
of  that,  in  a  manner  so  artful  that  the  millionaires 
were  to  wake  up  one  morning  at  last,  and  behold, 
they  would  find  themselves  poor  men !  For  a  decade 
or  more  Mr.  Pease,  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw,  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Sidney  Webb,  Mrs.  Besant,  Dr.  Lawson  Dodd,  and 
their  associates  of  the  London  Fabian  Society  did 
pit  their  wits  and  ability,  or  at  any  rate  the  wits 
and  ability  of  their  leisure  moments,  against  the 
embattled  capitalists  of  England  and  the  world,  in 
this  complicated  and  delicate  enterprise,  without 
any  apparent  diminution  of  the  larger  accumula- 
tions of  wealth.     But  in  addition  they  developed 

27 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

another  side  of  Fabianism,  still  more  subtle,  which 
professed  to  be  a  kind  of  restoration  in  kind  of 
property  to  the  proletariat,  and  in  this  direction 
they  were  more  successful.  A  dexterous  use,  they 
decided,  was  to  be  made  of  the  Poor  Law,  the  public 
health  authority,  the  education  authority,  and  build- 
ing regulations  and  so  forth,  to  create,  so  to  speak, 
a  communism  of  the  lower  levels.  The  mass  of 
people  whom  the  forces  of  change  had  expropriated 
were  to  be  given  a  certain  minimum  of  food,  shelter, 
education,  and  sanitation,  and  this,  the  socialists 
were  assured,  could  be  used  as  the  thin  end  of  the 
wedge  towards  a  complete  communism.  The  mini- 
mum, once  established,  could  obviously  be  raised 
continually  until  either  everybody  had  what  they 
needed  or  the  resources  of  society  gave  out  and  set 
a  limit  to  the  process.  v 

This  second  method  of  attack  brought  the  Fa- 
bian movement  into  co-operation  with  a  large  amount 
of  benevolent  and  constructive  influence  outside 
the  socialist  ranks  altogether.  Few  wealthy  peo- 
ple really  grudge  the  poor  a  share  of  the  neces- 
sities of  life,  and  most  are  quite  willing  to  assist  in 
projects  for  such  a  distribution.  But  while  these 
schemes  naturally  involved  a  very  great  amount  of 
regulation  and  regimentation  of  the  affairs  of  the 
poor,  the  Fabian  Society  fell  away  more  and  more 
from  its  associated  proposals  for  the  socialisation  of 
the  rich.  The  Fabian  project  changed  steadily  in 
character  until  at  last  it  ceased  to  be  in  any  sense 

28 


THE   PAST  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

antagonistic  to  wealth  as  such.  If  the  Hon  did  not 
exactly  lie  down  with  the  lamb,  at  any  rate  the  man 
with  the  gun  and  the  alleged  social  mad  dog  re- 
turned very  peaceably  together.  The  Fabian  hunt 
was  up. 

Great  financiers  contributed  generously  to  a 
School  of  Economics  that  had  been  founded  with 
moneys  left  to  the  Fabian  Society  by  earlier  enthusi- 
asts for  socialist  propaganda  and  education.  It 
remained  for  Mr.  Belloc  to  point  the  moral  of  the 
whole  development  with  a  phrase,  to  note  that 
Fabianism  no  longer  aimed  at  the  socialisation  of 
the  whole  community,  but  only  at  the  socialisation 
of  the  poor.  The  first  really  complete  project  for 
a  new  social  order  to  replace  the  Normal  Social 
Life  was  before  the  world,  and  this  project  was  the 
compulsory  regimentation  of  the  workers  and  the 
complete  state  control  of  labour  under  a  new  plu- 
tocracy. Our  present  chaos  was  to  be  organised 
into  a  Servile  State. 


IV 

Now  to  many  of  us  who  found  the  general  spirit 
of  the  socialist  movement  at  least  hopeful  and 
attractive  and  sympathetic,  this  would  be  an  almost 
tragic  conclusion,  did  we  believe  that  Fabianism  was 
anything  more  than  the  first  experiment  in  plan- 
ning— and  one  almost  inevitably  shallow  and  pre- 
sumptuous— of  the  long  series  that  may  be  neces- 
Q  29 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

sary  before  a  clear  light  breaks  upon  the  road 
humanity  must  follow.  But  we  decline  to  be  forced 
by  this  one  intellectual  fiasco  towards  the  laissez 
faire  of  the  Individualist  and  the  Marxist,  or  to 
accept  the  Normal  Social  Life  with  its  atmosphere 
of  hens  and  cows  and  dung,  its  incessant  toil,  its 
servitude  of  women,  and  its  endless  repetitions  as 
the  only  tolerable  life  conceivable  for  the  bulk  of 
mankind — as  the  ultimate  life,  that  is,  of  mankind. 
With  less  arrogance  and  confidence,  but  it  may  be 
with  a  firmer  faith  than  our  predecessors  of  the 
Fabian  essays,  we  declare  that  we  believe  a  more 
spacious  social  order  than  any  that  exists  or  ever 
has  existed,  a  Peace  of  the  World  in  which  there  is 
an  almost  universal  freedom,  health,  happiness,  and 
well-being,  and  which  contains  the  seeds  of  a  still 
greater  future,  is  possible  to  mankind.  We  propose 
to  begin  again  with  the  recognition  of  those  same 
difficulties  the  Fabians  first  realised.  But  we  do 
not  propose  to  organise  a  society,  form  a  group  for 
the  control  of  the  two  chief  political  parties,  bring 
about  "socialism"  in  twenty-five  years,  or  do  any- 
thing beyond  contributing  in  our  place  and  measure 
to  that  constructive  discussion  whose  real  magni- 
tude we  now  begin  to  realise. 

We  have  faith  in  a  possible  future,  but  it  is  a 
faith  that  makes  the  quality  of  that  future  entirely 
dependent  upon  the  strength  and  clearness  of  pur- 
pose that  this  present  time  can  produce.  We  do 
not  believe  the  greater  social  state  is  inevitable. 

30 


THE   PAST  AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

Yet  there  is,  we  hold,  a  certain  qualified  inevi- 
tability about  this  greater  social  state  because  we 
believe  any  social  state  not  affording  a  general  con- 
tentment, a  general  freedom,  and  a  general  and 
increasing  fulness  of  life,  must  sooner  or  later  col- 
lapse and  disintegrate  again,  and  revert  more  or 
less  completely  to  the  Normal  Social  Life,  and  be- 
cause we  believe  the  Normal  Social  Life  is  itself 
thick-sown  with  the  seeds  of  fresh  beginnings.  The 
Normal  Social  Life  has  never  at  any  time  been 
absolutely  permanent,  always  it  has  carried  within 
itself  the  germs  of  enterprise  and  adventure  and 
exchanges  that  finally  attack  its  stability.  The 
superimposed  social  order  of  to-day,  such  as  it  is, 
with  its  huge  development  of  expropriated  labour, 
and  the  schemes  of  the  later  Fabians  to  fix  this 
state  of  affairs  in  an  organised  form  and  render  it 
plausibly  tolerable,  seem  also  doomed  to  accumulate 
catastrophic  tensions.  Bureaucratic  schemes  for 
establishing  the  regular  lifelong  subordination  of 
a  labouring  class,  enlivened  though  they  may  be 
by  frequent  inspection,  disciplinary  treatment  dur- 
ing seasons  of  unemployment,  compulsory  tem- 
perance, free  medical  attendance,  and  a  cheap  and 
shallow  elementary  education,  fail  to  satisfy  the 
restless  cravings  in  the  heart  of  man.  They  are 
cravings  that  even  the  baffling  methods  of  the  most 
ingeniously  worked  Conciliation  Boards  cannot  per- 
manently restrain.  The  drift  of  any  Servile  State 
must  be  towards  a  class  revolt,  paralysing  sabotage, 

31 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  vSTATE 

and  a  general  strike.  The  more  rigid  and  complete 
the  Servile  State  becomes,  the  more  thorough  will 
be  its  ultimate  failure.  Its  fate  is  decay  or  explo- 
sion. From  its  debris  we  shall  either  revert  to  the 
Normal  Social  Life  and  begin  again  the  long  strug- 
gle towards  that  ampler,  happier,  juster  arrangement 
of  human  affairs  which  we  of  this  book,  at  any  rate, 
believe  to  be  possible,  or  we  shall  pass  into  the 
twilight  of  mankind. 

This  greater  social  life  we  put,  then,  as  the  only 
real  alternative  to  the  Normal  Social  Life  from  which 
man  is  continually  escaping.  For  it  we  do  not 
propose  to  use  the  expressions  the  "socialist  state" 
or  "socialism,"  because  we  believe  those  terms  have 
now  by  constant  confused  use  become  so  battered 
and  bent  and  discoloured  by  irrelevant  associations 
as  to  be  rather  misleading  than  expressive.  We 
propose  to  use  the  term  The  Great  State  to  express 
this  ideal  of  a  social  system  no  longer  localised,  no 
longer  immediately  tied  to  and  conditioned  by  the 
cultivation  of  the  land,  world-wide  in  its  interests 
and  outlook  and  catholic  in  its  tolerance  and  sym- 
pathy, a  system  of  great  individual  freedom  with  a 
universal  understanding  among  its  citizens  of  a 
collective  thought  and  purpose. 

Now  the  difficulties  that  lie  in  the  way  of  humanity 
in  its  complex  and  toilsome  journey  through  the 
coming  centuries  towards  this  Great  State  are  fun- 
damentally difficulties  of  adaptation  and  adjust- 
ment.    To  no  conceivable  social  state  is  man  in- 

32 


THE   PAST  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

herently  fitted:  he  is  a  creature  of  jealousy  and 
suspicion,  unstable,  restless,  acquisitive,  aggressive, 
intractible,  and  of  a  most  subtle  and  nimble  dis- 
honesty. Moreover,  he  is  imaginative,  adventurous, 
and  inventive.  His  nature  and  instincts  are  as 
much  in  conflict  with  the  necessary  restrictions  and 
subjugation  of  the  Normal  Social  Life  as  they  are 
likely  to  be  with  any  other  social  net  that  necessity 
may  weave  about  him.  But  the  Normal  Social 
Life  had  this  advantage,  that  it  has  a  vast  accu- 
mulated moral  tradition  and  a  minutely  worked-out 
material  method.  All  the  fundamental  institutions 
have  arisen  in  relation  to  it  and  are  adapted  to  its 
conditions.  To  revert  to  it  after  any  phase  of 
social  chaos  and  distress  is  and  will  continue  for 
many  years  to  be  the  path  of  least  resistance  for 
perplexed  humanity. 

Our  conception  of  the  Great  State,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  still  altogether  unsubstantial.  It  is  a  project 
as  dreamlike  to-day  as  electric  lighting,  electric 
traction,  or  aviation  would  have  been  in  the  year 
1850.  In  1850  a  man  reasonably  conversant  with 
the  physical  science  of  his  time  could  have  declared 
with  a  very  considerable  confidence  that,  given  a 
certain  measure  of  persistence  and  social  security, 
these  things  were  more  likely  to  be  attained  than 
not  in  the  course  of  the  next  century.  But  such  a 
prophecy  was  conditional  on  the  preliminary  accu- 
mulation of  a  considerable  amount  of  knowledge, 
on  many  experiments  and  failures.     Had  the  world 

33 


SOCIALISM   AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

of  1850,  by  some  wave  of  impulse,  placed  all  its 
resources  in  the  hands  of  the  ablest  scientific  man 
alive,  and  asked  him  to  produce  a  practicable  pay- 
ing electric  vehicle  before  1852,  he  would  have  at 
best  produced  some  clumsy,  curious  toy,  or  more 
probably  failed  altogether;  and,  similarly,  if  the  whole 
population  of  the  world  came  to  the  present  writers 
and  promised  meekly  to  do  whatever  it  was  told, 
we  should  find  ourselves  still  very  largely  at  a  loss 
in  our  projects  for  a  millennium.  Yet  just  as 
nearly  every  man  at  work  upon  Voltaic  electricity 
in  1850  knew  that  he  was  preparing  for  electric 
traction,  so  do  we  know  that  we  are,  with  a  whole 
row  of  unsolved  problems  before  us,  working  to- 
wards the  Great  State. 

Let  us  briefly  recapitulate  the  main  problems 
which  have  to  be  attacked  in  the  attempt  to  realise 
the  outline  of  the  Great  State.  At  the  base  of  the 
whole  order  there  must  be  some  method  of  agri- 
cultural production,  and  if  the  agricultural  labourer 
and  cottager  and  the  ancient  life  of  the  small  house- 
holder on  the  holding,  a  life  laborious,  prolific,  illit- 
erate, limited,  and  in  immediate  contact  with  the 
land  used,  is  to  recede  and  disappear,  it  must  recede 
and  disappear  before  methods  upon  a  much  larger 
scale,  employing  wholesale  machinery  and  involving 
great  economies.  It  is  alleged  by  modem  writers 
that  the  permanent  residence  of  the  cultivator  in 
close  relation  to  his  ground  is  a  legacy  from  the  days 
of  cumbrous  and  expensive  transit,  that  the  great 

34 


THE   PAST  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

proportion  of  farm  work  is  seasonal,  and  that  a 
migration  to  and  fro  between  rural  and  urban  con- 
ditions would  be  entirely  practicable  in  a  largely 
planned  community.  The  agricultural  population 
could  move  out  of  town  into  an  open-air  life  as  the 
spring  approached,  and  return  for  spending,  pleasure, 
and  education  as  the  days  shortened.  Already 
something  of  this  sort  occurs  under  extremely  un- 
favourable conditions  in  the  movement  of  the  fruit 
and  hop  pickers  from  the  east  end  of  London  into 
Kent,  but  that  is  a  mere  hint  of  the  extended  picnic 
which  a  broadly  planned  cultivation  might  afford. 
A  fully  developed  civilisation  employing  machines 
in  the  hands  of  highly  skilled  men  will  minimise 
toil  to  the  very  utmost,  no  man  will  shove  where  a 
machine  can  shove,  or  carry  where  a  machine  can 
carry;  but  there  will  remain,  more  particularly  in 
the  summer,  a  vast  amount  of  hand  operations, 
invigorating  and  even  attractive  to  the  urban  popu- 
lation. Given  short  hours,  good  pay,  and  all  the 
jolly  amusement  in  the  evening  camp  that  a  free, 
happy,  and  intelligent  people  will  develop  for  them- 
selves, and  there  will  be  little  difficulty  about  this 
particular  class  of  work  to  differentiate  it  from  any 
other  sort  of  necessary  labour. 

One  passes,  therefore,  with  no  definite  transition 
from  the  root  problem  of  agricultural  production  in  the 
Great  State  to  the  wider  problem  of  labour  in  general. 

A  glance  at  the  country-side  conjures  up  a  picture 
of  extensive  tracts  being  cultivated  on  a  wholesale 

35 


SOCIALISM  AND   THE   GREAT   STATE 

scale,  of  skilled  men  directing  great  ploughing,  sow- 
ing, and  reaping  plants,  steering  cattle  and  sheep 
about  carefully  designed  enclosures,  constructing 
channels  and  guiding  sewage  towards  its  proper 
destination  on  the  fields,  and  then  of  added  crowds 
of  genial  people  coming  out  to  spray  trees  and  plants, 
pick  and  sort  and  pack  fruits.  But  who  are  these 
people?  Why  are  they  in  particular  doing  this  for 
the  community?  Is  our  Great  State  still  to  have  a 
majority  of  people  glad  to  do  commonplace  work 
for  mediocre  wages,  and  will  there  be  other  individuals 
who  will  ride  by  on  the  roads ,  sympathetically  no  doubt , 
but  with  a  secret  sense  of  superiority  ?  So  one  opens 
the  general  problem  of  the  organisation  for  labour. 

I  am  careful  here  to  write  "for  labour"  and  not  "of 
Labour,"  because  it  is  entirely  against  the  spirit  of 
the  Great  State  that  any  section  of  the  people  should 
be  set  aside  as  a  class  to  do  most  of  the  monotonous, 
laborious,  and  uneventful  things  for  the  community. 
That  is  practically  the  present  arrangement,  and 
that,  with  a  quickened  sense  of  the  need  of  break- 
ing people  in  to  such  a  life,  is  the  ideal  of  the  bu- 
reaucratic Servile  State  to  which  in  common  with 
the  Conservators  we  are  bitterly  opposed.  And 
here  I  know  we  are  at  our  most  difficult,  most 
speculative,  and  most  revolutionary  point.  We  who 
look  to  the  Great  State  as  the  present  aim  of  human 
progress  believe  a  state  may  solve  its  economic 
problem  without  any  section  whatever  of  the  com- 
munity being  condemned  to  lifelong  labour.     And 

36 


THE   PAST  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

contemporary  events,  the  phenomena  of  recent 
strikes,  the  phenomena  of  sabotage  carry  out  the 
suggestion  that  in  a  community  where  nearly  every 
one  reads  extensively,  travels  about,  sees  the  charm 
and  variety  in  the  lives  of  prosperous  and  leisurely 
people,  no  class  is  going  to  submit  permanently  to 
modern  labour  conditions  without  extreme  resist- 
ance, even  after  the  most  elaborate  Labour  Con- 
ciliation schemes  and  social  minima  are  established. 
Things  are  altogether  too  stimulating  to  the  imagi- 
nation nowadays.  Of  all  impossible  social  dreams 
that  belief  in  tranquillised  and  submissive  and 
virtuous  Labour  is  the  wildest  of  all.  No  sort  of 
modern  men  will  stand  it.  They  will  as  a  class  do 
any  vivid  and  disastrous  thing  rather  than  stand  it. 
Even  the  illiterate  peasant  will  only  endure  lifelong 
toil  under  the  stimulus  of  private  ownership  and 
with  the  consolations  of  religion;  and  the  typical 
modern  worker  has  neither  the  one  nor  the  other. 
For  a  time,  indeed,  for  a  generation  or  so  even,  a 
labour  mass  may  be  fooled  or  coerced,  but  in  the 
end  it  will  break  out  against  its  subjection  even  if 
it  breaks  out  to  a  general  social  catastrophe. 

We  have,  in  fact,  to  invent  for  the  Great  State, 
if  we  are  to  suppose  any  Great  State  at  all,  an  eco- 
nomic method  without  any  specific  labour  class. 
If  we  cannot  do  so,  we  had  better  throw  ourselves 
in  with  the  conservators  forthwith,  for  they  are 
right  and  we  are  absurd.  Adhesion  to  the  concep- 
tion of  the  Great  State  involves  adhesion  to  the 

37 

9.  4 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

belief  that  the  amount  of  regular  labour,  skilled  and 
unskilled,  required  to  produce  everything  necessary 
for  every  one  living  in  its  highly  elaborate  civilisa- 
tion may,  under  modern  conditions,  with  the  help 
of  scientific  economy  and  power-producing  ma- 
chinery, be  reduced  to  so  small  a  number  of  working 
hours  per  head  in  proportion  to  the  average  life  of 
the  citizen,  as  to  be  met  as  regards  the  greater 
moiety  of  it  by  the  payment  of  wages  over  and 
above  the  gratuitous  share  of  each  individual  in 
the  general  output;  and  as  regards  the  residue,  a 
residue  of  rough,  disagreeable,  and  monotonous 
operations,  by  some  form  of  conscription,  which  will 
devote  a  year,  let  us  say,  of  each  person's  life  to  the 
public  service.  If  we  reflect  that  in  the  contempo- 
rary state  there  is  already  food,  shelter,  and  cloth- 
ing of  a  sort  for  every  one,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
enormous  numbers  of  people  do  no  productive  work 
at  all  because  they  are  too  well  off,  that  great  num- 
bers are  out  of  work,  great  numbers  by  bad  nutrition 
and  training  incapable  of  work,  and  that  an  enormous 
amount  of  the  work  actually  done  is  the  overlapping 
production  of  competitive  trade  and  work,  upon  such 
politically  necessary  but  socially  useless  things  as 
Dreadnoughts,  it  becomes  clear  that  the  absolutely 
unavoidable  labour  in  a  modern  community  and  its 
ratio  to  the  available  vitality  must  be  of  very  small 
account  indeed.  But  all  this  has  still  to  be  worked 
out  even  in  the  most  general  terms.  An  intelligent 
science  of  Economics  should  afford  standards  and 

38 


THE   PAST  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

technicalities  and  systematised  facts  upon  which 
to  base  an  estimate.  The  point  was  raised  a  quarter 
of  a  century  ago  by  Morris  in  his  News  from  Nowhere, 
and  indeed  it  was  already  discussed  by  More  in  his 
Utopia.  Our  contemporary  economics  is,  however, 
still  a  foolish,  pretentious  pseudo-science,  a  fester- 
ing mass  of  assumptions  about  buying  and  selling  and 
wages-paying,  and  one  would  as  soon  consult  Bradshaw 
or  the  works  of  Dumas  as  our  orthodox  professors  of 
Economics  for  any  light  upon  this  fundamental  matter. 
Moreover,  we  believe  that  there  is  a  real  dispo- 
sition to  work  in  human  beings,  and  that  in  a  well- 
equipped  community,  in  which  no  one  was  under  an 
unavoidable  urgency  to  work,  the  greater  proportion 
of  productive  operations  could  be  made  sufficiently 
attractive  to  make  them  desirable  occupations.  As 
for  the  irreducible  residue  of  undesirable  toil,  I  owe 
to  my  friend  the  late  Professor  William  James  this 
suggestion  of  a  general  conscription  and  a  period  of 
public  service  for  every  one,  a  suggestion  which 
greatly  occupied  his  thoughts  during  the  last  years 
of  his  life.  He  was  profoundly  convinced  of  the 
high  educational  and  disciplinary  value  of  universal 
compulsory  military  service,  and  of  the  need  of 
something  more  than  a  sentimental  ideal  of  duty  in 
public  life.  He  would  have  had  the  whole  popula- 
tion taught  in  the  schools  and  prepared  for  this 
year  (or  whatever  period  it  had  to  be)  of  patient 
and  heroic  labour,  the  men  for  the  mines,  the  fish- 
eries,   the    sanitary    services,    railway    routine,    the 

39 


SOCIALISM  AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

women  for  hospital,  and  perhaps  educational  work, 
and  so  forth.  He  believed  such  a  service  would  perme- 
ate the  whole  state  with  a  sense  of  civic  obligation.  .  .  . 

But  behind  all  these  conceivable  triumphs  of 
scientific  adjustment  and  direction  lies  the  infinitely 
greater  difficulty  on  our  way  to  the  Great  State, 
the  difficulty  of  direction.  What  sort  of  people  are 
going  to  distribute  the  work  of  the  community,  de- 
cide what  is  or  is  not  to  be  done,  determine  wages, 
initiate  enterprises ;  and  under  what  sort  of  criticism, 
checks,  and  controls  are  they  going  to  do  this  delicate 
and  extensive  work  ?  With  this  we  open  the  whole  prob- 
lem of  government,  administration,  and  officialdom. 

The  Marxist  and  the  democratic  socialist  gen- 
erally shirk  this  riddle  altogether;  the  Fabian  con- 
ception of  a  bureaucracy,  official  to  the  extent  of 
being  a  distinct  class  and  cult,  exists  only  as  a 
starting-point  for  healthy  repudiations.  Whatever 
else  may  be  worked  out  in  the  subtler  answers  our 
later  time  prepares,  nothing  can  be  clearer  than 
that  the  necessary  machinery  of  government  must 
be  elaborately  organised  to  prevent  the  develop- 
ment of  a  managing  caste,  in  permanent  conspiracy, 
tacit  or  expressed,  against  the  normal  man.  Quite 
apart  from  the  danger  of  unsympathetic  and  fatally 
irritating  government,  there  can  be  little  or  no 
doubt  that  the  method  of  making  men  officials  for 
life  is  quite  the  worst  way  of  getting  official  duties 
done.  Officialdom  is  a  species  of  incompetence. 
The    rather   priggish,    timid,    teachable    and    well- 

40 


THE   PAST  AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

behaved  sort  of  boy  who  is  attracted  by  the  pros- 
pect of  assured  income  and  a  pension  to  win  his 
way  into  the  civil  service,  and  who  then  by  varied 
assiduities  rises  to  a  sort  of  timidly  vindictive  im- 
portance, is  the  last  person  to  whom  we  would 
willingly  intrust  the  vital  interests  of  a  nation.  We 
want  people  who  know  about  life  at  large,  who  will 
come  to  the  public  service  seasoned  by  experience, 
not  people  who  have  specialised  and  acquired  that 
sort  of  knowledge  which  is  called,  in  much  the  same 
spirit  of  qualification  as  one  speaks  of  German  Sil- 
ver, Expert  Knowledge.  It  is  clear  our  public  ser- 
vants and  officials  must  be  so  only  for  their  periods 
of  service.  They  must  be  taught  by  life,  and  not 
"trained"  by  pedagogues.  In  every  continuing  job 
there  is  a  time  when  one  is  crude  and  blundering, 
a  time,  the  best  time,  when  one  is  full  of  the  fresh- 
ness and  happiness  of  doing  well,  and  a  time  when 
routine  has  largely  replaced  the  stimulus  of  novelty. 
The  Great  State  will,  I  feel  convinced,  regard 
changes  in  occupation  as  a  proper  circumstance  in 
the  life  of  every  citizen ;  it  will  value  a  certain  ama- 
teurishness in  its  service,  and  prefer  it  to  the  trite 
omniscience  of  the  stale  official. 

And  since  the  Fabian  socialists  have  created  a 
wide-spread  belief  that  in  their  projected  state  every 
man  will  be  necessarily  a  public  servant  or  a  public 
pupil  because  the  state  will  be  the  only  employer 
and  the  only  educator,  it  is  necessary  to  point  out 
that  the  Great  State  presupposes  neither  the  one 

41 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

nor  the  other.  It  is  a  form  of  liberty  and  not  a 
form  of  enslavement.  We  agree  with  the  bolder 
forms  of  socialism  in  supposing  an  initial  proprie- 
tary independence  in  every  citizen.  The  citizen  is 
a  shareholder  in  the  state.  Above  that  and  after 
that,  he  works  if  he  chooses.  But  if  he  likes  to 
live  on  his  minimum  and  do  nothing — though  such 
a  type  of  character  is  scarcely  conceivable — he  can. 
His  earning  is  his  own  surplus.  Above  the  basal 
economics  of  the  Great  State  we  assume  with  con- 
fidence there  will  be  a  huge  surplus  of  free  spending 
upon  extra-collective  ends.  Public  organisations, 
for  example,  may  distribute  impartially  and  possi- 
bly even  print  and  make  ink  and  paper  for  the  news- 
papers in  the  Great  State,  but  they  will  certainly 
not  own  them.  Only  doctrine-driven  men  have  ever 
ventured  to  think  they  would.  Nor  will  the  state  con- 
trol writers  and  artists,  for  example,  nor  the  stage 
— though  it  may  build  and  own  theatres — the  tailor, 
the  dressmaker,  the  restaurant  cook,  an  enormous  mul- 
titude of  other  busy  workers-for-preferences.  In  the 
Great  State  of  the  future,  as  in  the  life  of  the  more 
prosperous  classes  of  to-day,  the  greater  proportion 
of  occupations  and  activities  will  be  private  and  free. 
I  would  like  to  underline  in  the  most  emphatic 
way  that  it  is  possible  to  have  this  Great  State, 
essentially  socialistic,  owning  and  running  the  land 
and  all  the  great  public  services,  sustaining  every- 
body in  absolute  freedom  at  a  certain  minimum  of 
comfort  and  well-being,  and  still  leaving  most  of 

42 


THE   PAST  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

the  interests,  amusements,  and  adornments  of  the 
individual  hfe,  and  all  sorts  of  collective  concerns, 
social  and  political  discussion,  religious  worship, 
philosophy,  and  the  like  to  the  free  personal  initia- 
tives of  entirely  unofficial  people. 

This  still  leaves  the  problem  of  systematic  knowl- 
edge and  research,  and  all  the  associated  problems 
of  aesthetic,  moral,  and  intellectual  initiative  to  be 
worked  out  in  detail;  but  at  least  it  dispels  the 
nightmare  of  a  collective  mind  organised  as  a 
branch  of  the  civil  service,  with  authors,  critics, 
artists,  scientific  investigators  appointed  in  a  phrensy 
of  wire-pulling — as  nowadays  the  British  state  ap- 
points its  bishops  for  the  care  of  its  collective  soul. 

I  will  not  venture  here  to  invade  the  province  of 
my  colleagues  in  the  treatment  of  the  Great  State  in 
its  relation  to  individual  education,  in  the  discussion 
of  the  methods  by  means  of  which  the  accumulating 
results  of  the  free  activities  of  the  free  collective 
mind  will  be  brought  to  bear  upon  the  development 
of  the  young  citizen,  nor  will  I  do  more  than  point 
out  our  present  extreme  ignorance  and  indecision 
upon  those  two  closely  correlated  problems,  the 
problem  of  family  organisation  and  the  problem  of 
women's  freedom.  In  the  Normal  Social  Life  the 
position  of  women  is  easily  defined.  They  are  sub- 
ordinated but  important.  The  citizenship  rests 
with  the  man,  and  the  woman's  relation  to  the  com- 
munity as  a  whole  is  through  a  man.  But  within 
that  limitation  her  functions  as  mother,  wife,  and 

43 


SOCIALISM   AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

home-maker  are  cardinal.  It  is  one  of  the  entirely 
unforeseen  consequences  that  have  arisen  from  the 
decay  of  the  Normal  Social  Life  and  its  autonomous 
home  that  great  numbers  of  women  while  still  sub- 
ordinate have  become  profoundly  unimportant. 
They  have  ceased  to  a  very  large  extent  to  bear 
children,  they  have  dropped  most  of  their  home- 
making  arts,  they  no  longer  nurse  nor  educate  such 
children  as  they  have,  and  they  have  taken  on  no 
new  functions  that  compensate  for  these  dwindling 
activities  of  the  domestic  interior.  That  subjuga- 
tion which  is  a  vital  condition  to  the  Normal  Social 
Life  does  not  seem  to  be  necessary  to  the  Great 
State.  It  may  or  it  may  not  be  necessary.  And 
here  we  enter  upon  the  most  difficult  of  all  our 
problems.  The  whole  spirit  of  the  Great  State  is 
against  any  avoidable  subjugation;  but  the  whole 
spirit  of  that  science  which  will  animate  the  Great 
State  forbids  us  to  ignore  woman's  functional  and 
temperamental  differences.  A  new  status  has  still 
to  be  invented  for  women,  a  Feminine  Citizenship 
differing  in  certain  respects  from  the  normal  mascu- 
line citizenship.  Its  conditions  remain  to  be  worked 
out.  We  have  indeed  to  work  out  an  entire  new 
system  of  relations  between  men  and  women,  that 
will  be  free  from  servitude,  aggression,  provocation, 
or  parasitism.  The  public  Endowment  of  Mother- 
hood as  such  may  perhaps  be  the  first  broad  sug- 
gestion of  the  quality  of  this  new  status.  A  new 
type  of  family,  a  mutual  alliance  in  the  place  of  a 

44 


THE   PAST  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

subjugation,  is  perhaps  the  most  starthng  of  all  the 
conceptions  which  confront  us  directly  we  turn 
ourselves  definitely  towards  the  Great  State. 

And  as  our  conception  of  the  Great  State  grows, 
so  we  shall  begin  to  realise  the  nature  of  the  problem 
of  transition,  the  problem  of  what  we  may  best  do 
in  the  confusion  of  the  present  time  to  elucidate  and 
render  practicable  this  new  phase  of  human  organ- 
isation. Of  one  thing  there  can  be  no  doubt,  that 
whatever  increases  thought  and  knowledge  moves 
towards  our  goal;  and  equally  certain  is  it  that 
nothing  leads  thither  that  tampers  with  the  free- 
dom of  spirit,  the  independence  of  soul  in  common 
men  and  women.  In  many  directions,  therefore,  the 
believer  in  the  Great  State  will  display  a  jealous 
watchfulness  of  contemporary  developments  rather 
than  a  premature  constructiveness.  We  must  watch 
wealth;  but  quite  as  necessary  it  is  to  watch  the 
legislator,  who  mistakes  propaganda  for  progress 
and  class  exasperation  to  satisfy  class  vindictive- 
ness  for  construction.  Supremely  important  is  it 
to  keep  discussion  open,  to  tolerate  no  limitation  on 
the  freedom  of  speech,  writing,  art  and  book  dis- 
tribution, and  to  sustain  the  utmost  liberty  of  criti- 
cism upon  all  contemporary  institutions  and  processes. 

This  briefly  is  the  programme  of  problems  and 
effort  to  which  this  idea  of  the  Great  State,  as  the 
goal  of  contemporary  progress,  directs  our  minds. 
My  colleagues  deal  more  particularly  with  various 
aspects  of  this  general  proposal. 

4  45 


SOCIALISM   AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 


I  append  a  diagram  which  shows  compactly  the 
gist  of  the  preceding  chapter. 

THE  NORMAL  SOCIAL  LIFE 


produces  an  increasing  surplus  of  energy  and  opportunity,  more 
particularly  under  modern  conditions  of  scientific  organisation 
and  power  production ;  and  this  through  the  operation  of  rent  and 
of  usury  generally  tends  to 


r 


and 


I 
(b)  expropriate 


(a)  release 

.       I 
an  mcreasmg  proportion  of  the  population  to  become: 


(a)    A    LEISURE    CLASS 

under  no  urgent  compulsion 
to  work 

3 


and  (b)  a  labour  class 

divorced  from  the  land  and  liv- 
ing upon  uncertain  wages 


which  may  de- 
I  generate  into 
I    a  waster  class 


which  may  degen- 
erate into  a  sweat- 
ed, overworked, 
violently  resentful 
and  destructive 
rebel  class 


and     produce    a 
Social  Debacle 


which  may  be- 
come a  Governing 
C'lass(with  waster 
elements)  in 
an  unprogressive 
Bureaucratic 
Servile  State 


which  may  be- 
come the  con- 
trolled, regimen- 
ted,and  disciplined 
Labour  Class  of 
an  unprogressive 
Bureaucratic 
Servile  State 


which  may  become 
the  whole  community 
of  the  Great  State 
working  under  vari- 
ous motives  and  in- 
ducements, but  not 
constantly,  nor  per- 
manently, nor  un- 
willingly. 


which  may  be 
rendered  needless' 
by  a  general  la- 
bour conscription 
together  with  a 
scientific  organisa- 
tion of  production, 
and  so  reabsorbed 
by  re-endowment 
into  the  Leisure 
Class  of  the 
Great  State 


THE   GREAT   STATE   AND   THE 
COUNTRY-SIDE 

BY   THE   COUNTESS   OF   WARWICK 


II 

THE   GREAT   STATE   AND   THE 
COUNTRY-SIDE 

The  dividing  line  which  separates  the  Country 
from  the  Town,  the  countryman  from  the  towns- 
man, is  a  comparatively  recent  phenomenon  in 
human  affairs.  Almost  to  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century — except  in  a  very  few  great  cities,  such  as 
London,  Rome,  Constantinople,  and  Paris,  for  ex- 
ample— there  were  not  many  members  of  a  civilised 
State  who  were  entirely  divorced  from  a  share  in 
the  work  and  the  pleasures  of  the  fields  and  woods. 
The  great  towns  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  the  earlier 
Modem  Period  were  of  a  size  that  would  now  be 
entitled  to  the  name  of  little  market  towns,  except 
for  the  few  of  the  rank  exampled  above.  As  for 
their  inhabitants,  take  the  case  of  the  woollen- 
spinners  when  they  began  to  build  up  England's 
industrial  supremacy:  they  were  at  first  merely  an 
agricultural  peasantry  who  occupied  their  spare 
time  and  the  time  of  the  unemployed  members  of 
their  families  in  spinning  in  the  rooms  and  sheds 
around  their  cottages.  They  were  much  more  en- 
titled to  the  name  of  agriculturists  than  the  descrip- 

49 


SOCIALISM   AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

tion  of  industrial  artisans.  But  this  is  not  the  place 
for  a  study  of  the  history  of  the  Country- side,  suffice 
it  to  sum  up  the  matter  by  a  specific  illustration; 
the  town  of  Warwick,  as  it  stands  to-day,  is  a  fairly 
typical  example  of  the  normal  towns  of  the  earlier 
period;  while  Manchester  or  Birmingham  is  a  typi- 
cal city  of  modern  life.  The  radical  distinctions 
between  the  two  classes  are  fairly  obvious;  and  a 
clear  conception  of  this  fundamental  fact  of  the 
modem  city  will  be  a  convenient  starting-point  for 
our  examination  of  the  possibilities  of  country  life 
under  the  ideal  conditions  of  the  Great  State. 

It  will  be  for  others  to  discuss  the  phenomena  of 
the  intervening  period  of  transition  from  the  present 
to  the  future:  it  is  the  business  of  this  essay  to 
describe  the  Country  as  it  visualises  itself  to  the 
mind  of  one  who  accepts  and  hopes  for  the  Great 
State  as  the  most  probable  and  most  desirable  con- 
dition of  human  society,  as  it  will  one  day  be  organ- 
ised. It  will  be  a  frankly  ideal  presentation  of  the 
Country-side  of  the  Great  State.  But  although  it 
will  be  a  statement  of  an  ideal  place,  it  does  not 
necessarily  follow  that  it  is  based  on  phantoms  of 
the  imagination.  On  the  contrary,  we  idealists  of 
the  Great  State  claim  that  our  visions  are  founded 
on  a  substantial  ground-work  of  hard,  material 
facts;  we  reach  our  ideal  by  rational  conclusions 
from  things  which  already  exist.  We  argue  from 
the  known  to  the  unknown. 

At  the  beginning  of  this  statement  it  seems  very 

50 


THE  GREAT  STATE  AND  THE  COUNTRY-SIDE 

clear  that  no  rational  ideal  can  admit  the  possibility 
of  the  continued  existence  of  such  an  unsightly 
social  sore  as  Manchester  or  Liverpool  or  Newcastle 
or  the  suburbs  of  London  or  its  East  End.  There 
will,  of  course,  be  no  room  in  the  Great  State  for 
towns  of  factories  belching  forth  yellow  fog;  there 
will  be  no  place  for  congested  areas  of  slums.  But 
our  rebellion  will  go  further  than  this :  for  the  fresh 
air  of  the  country,  with  its  quiet  sunshine  and  open 
fields,  with  its  flowers  and  birds,  is  all  such  a 
vital  part  of  a  rational  human  life  that  no  civilised 
beings  will  be  content  to  be  buried  in  the  middle  of 
great  cities,  however  healthy  they  may  be  made. 
Perhaps  the  most  fundamental  change  in  the  ideal 
Great  State  will  be  the  abolition  of  the  overswollen 
town  and  the  revival  of  the  saner  towns  of  earlier 
days.  There  will  be  fewer  enormous  cities  like 
New  York  and  Chicago,  there  will  be  more  boroughs 
of  the  size  of  Ipswich,  Chester,  Reading,  and  York. 
The  radical  distinction  between  the  Country  and 
the  Town  will  have  disappeared. 

This  change  will  be  rendered  possible  because  the 
means  of  transit — railways,  trams,  light-railways, 
and  motor  traction,  perhaps  aeroplanes  or  some- 
thing better — will  be  so  vastly  improved  that  there 
will  be  no  need  for  people  to  herd  together  in  closely 
packed  groups.  When  it  is  a  simple  matter  for  the 
citizens  to  move  themselves  and  their  belongings 
and  the  produce  of  their  labour  from  one  point  to 
another,  almost  the  whole  advantage  of  town  segre- 

Si 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

gation  will  vanish.  The  railways  and  trams  and 
cars  will  then  be  communal  and  free  services,  just 
as  the  roads  are  communal  and  free  to-day.  The 
waste  of  innumerable  ticket-collectors  and  booking- 
clerks  will  be  saved:  the  citizens  of  the  Great  State 
will  regard  transit  as  a  commonplace,  which  they  will 
provide  without  stint  and  encourage  every  one  to 
use  without  a  moment's  hesitation. 

But  there  may  be  some  readers  who  are  asking 
what  all  this  concerning  towns  has  to  do  in  an  essay 
on  the  Country.  It  has  everything  to  do  with  the 
subject,  for  we  cannot  know  what  will  be  Country 
until  we  have  decided  what  will  belong  to  the  Town. 
If  the  population  is  to  be  distributed  in  a  larger 
number  of  smaller-sized  towns,  instead  of  in  the 
huge  towns  as  at  present,  then  it  is  clear  that  our 
conception  of  the  Country  is  materially  altered  by 
the  fact  that  there  will  not  be  many  parts  of  the 
State  which  are  very  distant  from  a  town.  Here 
we  reach  an  all-important  factor  in  the  problem. 
There  will  be  no  need  in  the  Great  State  for  any 
rural  dwellers  to  be  utterly  divorced  from  those 
unlimited  advantages  of  civilised  life  which  can  only 
be  obtained  by  intercourse  with  a  centralised  col- 
lection of  human  activities  at  one  spot. 

Town  life  has  brought  many  evils  in  its  train; 
but  there  are  certain  invaluable  advantages  which 
only  the  town  segregation  can  procure.  For  ex- 
ample, a  well-equipped  opera-house,  a  theatre,  a 
concert-hall;    art  galleries  and  museums;    libraries, 

52 


THE  GREAT  STATE  AND  THE  COUNTRY-SIDE 

swimming-baths;  specialised  medical  advice  and 
special  instruction;  facilities  for  higher  education; 
large  shops,  with  a  full  variety  of  choice  for  their 
customers;  the  invigorating  interchange  of  the  so- 
cial intercourse  of  large  gatherings;  all  these  things 
demand  a  town  of  a  fairly  extensive  size  for  their 
accomplishment.  The  torpor  of  the  rural  dwellers 
of  to-day  is  largely  the  consequence  of  having  to 
do  without  these  advantages  of  the  city:  and  they 
will  remain  torpid  until  some  method  is  discovered 
of  placing  them  within  the  reach  of  the  countryman 
and  woman.  The  countryman  of  the  Great  State 
will  always  be  within  easy  reach  of  the  town.  In- 
deed, when  we  consider  the  organisation  of  the 
agricultural  work  of  this  Great  State  it  will  seem 
probable  that  comparatively  few  people  will  live 
outside  the  town.  This  agricultural  business  we 
will  now  consider  in  some  detail;  after  which  we 
shall  be  the  better  able  to  view  the  picture  as  a 
whole. 

After  all,  the  main  purpose  of  the  country,  in 
the  material  sense  at  least,  is  to  pasture  beasts  and 
grow  corn  and  fruits  and  vegetables  and  trees.  It 
is  the  manufacturing  place  of  our  food:  and  the 
people  who  live  there  are  the  producers  of  animal 
and  vegetable  wealth.  The  country  must  be  or- 
ganised and  worked  with  that  end  in  view.  No 
one  who  knows  anything  of  the  technicalities  of 
farming  will  deny  that  this  work  of  producing  agri- 
cultural wealth  is  done  exceedingly  inefficiently  to- 

53 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

day,  in  England  at  least.  In  spite  of  all  the  teach- 
ing of  science,  in  spite  of  all  the  actual  practice  of 
many  foreign  nations,  we  are  still  farming  our  land 
after  the  manner  of  rule-of-thumb  rustics.  Our 
large  farmers  are  content  with  a  mere  minimum  of 
produce  which  will  pay  a  minimum  interest  on  the 
capital  expended;  our  small  holders  are  trying  to 
extract  a  larger  yield  by  methods  which  are  little 
better  than  the  working  of  a  village  allotment  in 
a  man's  evening  hours.  There  are  many  farmers 
who  are  doing  sufficiently  well  to  pay  their  land- 
lords' rent,  with  enough  over  to  give  themselves  a 
comfortable  living,  but  entirely  ignoring  the  fact 
that  the  nation  is  losing  all  the  surplus  wealth  which 
might  be  grown  if  they  had  the  knowledge  and  the 
energy.  Our  small  holders  are  struggling  along — 
often  going  under — as  isolated  units,  when  every 
Continental  country  is  an  object-lesson  of  the  truth 
that  small  holdings  are  only  really  successful  when 
there  is  close  co-operation  between  the  farmers. 

But  the  Great  State  will  have  got  beyond  any- 
thing so  unscientific  as  small  holdings  or  so  tran- 
sitory as  larger  farmers  bound  down  by  the  will  of 
rent-exacting  landlords.  Both  large  and  small 
farmers  are  as  uneconomical  and  mediaeval  as  is 
the  village  craftsman  when  compared  with  the 
great  modem  industrial  companies  and  trusts. 
There  is,  indeed,  a  better  case  for  the  small  crafts- 
man in  industry  than  there  is  for  the  small  farmer 
in    agricultural    organisation.     The    small    holding 

54 


THE  GREAT  STATE  AND  THE  COUNTRY-SIDE 

which  is  part  of  a  compHcated  system  of  co-opera- 
tion— and  that  is  its  only  chance  of  real  success — 
is,  in  fact,  not  strictly  speaking  a  small  holding  at 
all  in  any  more  reality  than  one  field  of  a  large 
farm  is  a  small  holding.  Everything  about  co- 
operative farming  goes  to  show  that  there  is  no 
good  reason  why  the  organisation  should  stop  short 
at  the  marketing  of  the  produce  or  the  buying  of 
the  seeds  and  implements.  If  it  is  well  to  co-operate 
in  these  ways,  it  is  also  well  to  co-operate  in  the 
production  of  the  goods.  And  when  small  holders 
co-operate  in  the  management  of  their  farms,  then, 
to  all  intents  and  purposes,  they  are  a  large,  united 
farm. 

Under  the  rule  of  the  Great  State,  the  landlord 
and  the  small  and  large  private  farmers  will  no 
longer  exist.  The  State  will  own  the  land,  and  it 
will  not  make  itself  ridiculous  by  letting  it  out  in 
petty  patches,  to  be  farmed  on  the  scale  that  one 
would  run  a  village  general-shop.  It  will,  on  the 
contrary,  be  divided  up  into  convenient  tracts,  of 
a  size  determined  by  the  nature  of  the  soil  and  the 
kind  of  produce  to  be  grown;  and  these  will  be 
worked  as  State  farms  under  the  control  of  a  di- 
rector and  assistants,  who  are  highly  trained  in  the 
latest  science  and  art  of  their  department  of  knowl- 
edge. Farming  will  be  a  profession  of  the  same 
rank  as  medicine,  public  administration,  and  edu- 
cation. The  ideal  of  these  agriculturalists  will  be 
to  produce  as  much  wealth  per  acre  as  the  soil  is 

55 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

capable  of  yielding.  The  farm- workers,  likewise, 
will  be  specially  trained  in  their  duties  by  a  course 
of  apprenticeship  on  the  land.  The  idea  of  getting 
good  farming  out  of  untrained  farmers  and  un- 
skilled labourers  will  be  thought  of  as  a  comical 
tradition  of  the  past. 

The  vast  difference  between  the  present  amateur 
farmers  and  the  professionals  we  contemplate  for 
the  future,  will  require  some  consideration  before 
it  is  grasped  by  the  reader  who  does  not  know 
the  ridiculous  inefficiency  of  present  agricultural 
methods.  It  is  not  by  any  means  the  fault  of  the 
farmers  and  landlords:  they  are  in  the  grip  of  a 
thoroughly  bad  system.  They  have  to  compete 
against  well-organised  co-operating  Danes,  or  against 
United  States  farmers  who  have  great  tracts  of  land 
at  their  disposal  without  urgent  need  for  careful 
economy  of  every  rood.  The  farmers  of  to-day  are 
content  if  they  can  get  a  living  for  themselves;  it 
is  not  part  of  their  desires  to  produce  as  much  agri- 
cultural wealth  as  their  land  is  capable  of  growing. 
Again,  if  some  foreign  competitors  can  grow  corn 
or  potatoes  more  cheaply  than  they  can  be  grown  in 
England,  then  the  private  farmer  is  compelled  to 
allow  his  land  to  remain  proportionately  unculti- 
vated. Whereas,  under  the  system  of  State  farms, 
the  land  would  be  cultivated  to  its  utmost  capacity, 
until  some  other  use  was  found  for  the  men  and  land. 
It  is  always  wasteful  to  allow  men  and  land  to 
stand  idle. 

S6 


THE   GREAT  STATE  AND  THE  COUNTRY-SIDE 

The  Great  State  will  very  probably  not  grow  corn 
in  England  at  all,  for  it  will  have  under  its  control 
more  suitable  land  as  it  is  now  found  in  Canada  or 
India.  Here  we  come  across  a  practical  advantage 
of  the  Great  State  system — namely,  it  has,  or  will 
have,  a  large  variety  of  choice  within  its  own  domain; 
it  will  not  be  compelled  to  grow  potatoes  on  a  few 
feet  of  rock  as  do  the  west-coast  peasants  of  Ireland. 
It  is  this  ridiculous  economic  waste  which  is  the 
dire  penalty  of  the  highly  localised  small-farm  sys- 
tem. The  State  Farm  Board  will  not  waste  its 
time  cultivating  bare  rocks  or  inferior  soil  until  it 
has  brought  its  richest  soil  to  its  fullest  fruition;  it 
will  allot  each  crop  to  the  locality  most  suitable  in 
the  area.  It  will  grow  its  corn  in  the  vast  plains  of 
the  great  continents,  for  corn  can  be  easily  shipped 
from  the  other  end  of  the  world  to  its  consumers. 
On  the  other  hand,  every  large  town  may  have  its 
milk  farm  and  its  vegetable  gardens  just  outside  its 
boundaries;  for  milk  and  vegetables  are  not  easily 
carried  without  loss  of  freshness.  But  even  in  these 
latter  departments  it  is  probable  that  improved 
facilities  of  transit  will  make  the  highly  specialised 
milk  farm  or  potato  farm — on  the  most  suitable 
soil — supplying  a  large  number  of  towns  and  large 
tracts  of  country,  a  reasonable  possibility. 

Certainly,  this  present  niggling  system  of  little 
holdings,  or  even  bigger  farms,  all  starved  for  want 
of  capital  and  compelled  to  use  the  wasteful  methods 
that  come  from  small  production,  all  this  will  be 

57 


SOCIALISM   AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

swept  away  contemptuously  by  a  State  Farm 
Board  which  sets  out  to  do  its  work  under  the  rules 
of  science  and  common  sense.  The  most  carefully 
organised  co-operative  farm  becomes  a  mediaeval 
method  when  compared  with  the  larger  schemes  of 
the  Great  State.  Agricultural  organisation  will  not 
be  squeezed  within  the  limits  of  small  local  necessi- 
ties and  the  stinted  capital  of  needy  men.  It  will 
be  managed  with  all  the  scope  and  all  the  national 
resources  at  the  disposal  of  a  great  state  department. 
The  Great  State  agriculture  will  be  to  the  agricul- 
ture of  to-day  what  the  Oil  Trust  is  to  the  oil-shop 
in  the  back  streets  of  a  slum  district :  only  the  profits 
will  go  to  the  whole  community  instead  of  into  the 
pockets  of  a  Mr.  Rockefeller. 

Needless  to  say,  the  farm-labourer  will  be  alto- 
gether a  different  person  from  the  man  of  to-day. 
His  wages  will  not  be  based  on  a  standard  of  what 
is  just  possible  for  the  minimum  of  a  rigidly  simple 
country  life.  He  will  take  an  equal  share  with  his 
fellow-citizens  of  the  towns  in  the  standard  of  living 
which  the  community  has  reached.  It  is  not  toler- 
able to  us  to  suppose  that  there  should  be  members 
of  the  community  doomed  year  after  year  to  sacri- 
fice their  leisure,  the  larger  interests,  and  all  the 
variety  of  life  in  order  that  their  fellows  can  be 
free.  Yet  that  is  the  position  of  the  agricultural 
workers  to-day;  they  are  cut  off  from  the  full  ad- 
vantages of  civilised  life,  pushed  into  a  corner,  and 
underpaid;    they  are  the  serfs  of  society.     The  es- 

58 


THE  GREAT  STATE  AND  THE  COUNTRY-SIDE 

sence  of  modern  culture  is  the  possibility  of  contact 
with  a  large  amount  of  varied  human  fellowship. 
It  is  absurd  to  say  that  the  solitary  countryman — 
shut  off  from  the  main  currents  of  social  develop- 
ments— is  as  good  a  man  as  the  best  product  of  the 
more  complex  life  of  the  towns.  The  rustic  may  be 
as  good  a  man  or  far  better  than  the  slum  dweller: 
but  then  the  slum  dweller  is  not  the  product  of  the 
advantages  of  the  town;  he  is,  rather,  the  result  of 
all  its  unnecessary  failure.  There  is  a  great  deal  of 
absurd  sentiment  talked  of  the  charming  "simpli- 
city" of  the  peasant.  We  are  not  out  to  cultivate 
"charming  simplicity" — "charming"  chiefly  to  the 
patronising  observer;  we  want  able  and  adaptable 
men. 

And  to  make  a  civilised  man  of  himself,  the  agri- 
culturalist must  have  full  leisure  to  get  away  from 
the  working  monotony  of  his  own  trade.  The  most 
satisfactory  of  trades  must  become  narrowing  if  they 
absorb  the  whole  of  life.  A  portrait-painter  or  a 
poet  who  gave  his  whole  time  to  painting  or  poesy 
would  be  a  poor  stunted  creature,  and  his  art  a  poor 
stunted  art.  And  so  likewise  with  the  farmer.  A 
rural  life,  with  all  its  freshness,  is  not  a  complete 
life:  it  lacks  the  variety  of  a  fully  developed  exist- 
ence. A  man  must  no  more  spend  his  whole  time  with 
bent  back,  hoeing  or  digging  from  dawn  to  dusk, 
than  a  cotton-spinner  should  spend  all  his  waking 
hours  at  his  loom.  When  his  reasonable  hours  of 
labour  are  ended,  the  farm-worker  must  be  able  to 

59 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

reach  all  the  culture  and  stimulus  which  are  within 
the  reach  of  the  dweller  in  the  complex  town. 

We  have  said  that  the  normal  town  of  the  Great 
State  will  probably  be  of  between  fifty  and  sixty 
thousand  inhabitants.  That  will  be  large  enough 
to  make  social  organisation  in  the  way  of  theatres 
and  libraries,  and  so  on,  quite  possible,  while  there 
will  be  no  interminable  circle  of  suburbs  to  cut  off 
the  citizens  from  the  fresh  country.  But  the  point 
which  concerns  us  here  is  that  the  rural  dweller  will 
be,  by  an  efficient  transit  system,  in  easy  reach  of 
these  towns.  As  we  have  also  suggested,  the  agri- 
cultural workers  may  easily  live  in  the  towns;  a 
very  slight  care  in  the  organisation  of  light  railways 
and  motors  may  enable  them  to  reach  their  fields 
and  return  to  the  towns  for  the  night.  However, 
the  village  may  also  remain  under  the  Great  State 
system;  many  people  may  still  prefer  to  live  in 
little  groups  of  a  few  hundreds  rather  than  in  a 
town,  however  fresh  and  clean.  Still  fewer  may 
prefer  the  isolated  houses;  and  these  will  have  the 
opportunity  to  act  as  guardians  of  the  outlying  crops 
and  herds.  But  all,  villages  or  solitary  cottagers, 
will  possess  the  leisure  and  the  facilities  for  reach- 
ing the  complex  town  when  they  please  to  go  thither. 
The  general  rule  will  probably  be  that  most  of  the 
agricultural  population  will  live  in  the  "big"  towns; 
the  rest  will  be  scattered  in  fairly  large  villages  within 
easy  reach  of  those  towns.  Here  and  there,  for  those 
who  have  a  passion  for  retirement,  will  be  lonely  houses. 

60 


THE  GREAT  STATE  AND  THE  COUNTRY-SIDE 

One  factor  which  is  worth  noting  in  passing  is  the 
fact  that,  under  the  big-scale  agriculture  of  the  Great 
State,  work  will  not  be  done  as  it  is  to-day  when  it 
is  customary  to  see  solitary  workers  in  the  fields; 
for  under  the  centralised  system,  with  plenty  of 
workers  for  the  job  and  systematic  organisation 
taking  the  place  of  the  present  haphazard  methods, 
it  will  be  much  more  possible  for  the  labour  to  be 
done  by  groups  of  workers  which  will  give  fellow- 
ship, instead  of  the  dreary  solitude  which  is  so  dead- 
ening to  many  minds;  also  there  will  be  better 
facilities  for  controlling  the  work  by  expert  overseers. 

But  there  is  another  aspect  from  which  we  must 
view  the  Country-side  of  the  Great  State.  So  far 
we  have  seen  that  the  rural  dwellers  will  tend  to 
collect  in  the  towns  as  their  permanent  dwelling- 
place  or  as  the  habitual  haunt  of  their  leisure. 
There  will  be  a  corresponding  approach  from  the 
other  side:  the  town  artisans  will  tend  to  come  out 
into  the  country  towns  and  villages  as  the  mon- 
strous city  of  the  present  breaks  up  from  sheer 
discomfort  and  uselessness.  The  public  industrial 
department  of  the  Great  State  will  not — like  the 
callous  companies  and  employers  of  to-day — plant 
its  factories  and  workshops  in  the  midst  of  over- 
grown cities,  when  the  work  can  be  as  efficiently 
done  within  reach  of  fresh  air  and  pleasant  recrea- 
tion. To-day  it  may  pay  the  employing  classes  to 
huddle  all  their  factories  together  and  build  all  their 
workers'  dwellings  in  long  strings  of  endless  streets. 

6i 


SOCIALISM  AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

But  when  an  educated  democracy  demands  some- 
thing better,  its  State  transit  department  will  find 
the  organisation  of  the  carrying  trade  a  matter  of 
comparative  simplicity.  When  the  community  works 
to  live  and  does  not  live  to  work,  the  first  considera- 
tion will  be  to  select  a  spot  where  men  and  women 
can  dwell  with  the  greatest  satisfaction  to  them- 
selves; and  few  people  are  likely  to  find  solace  in 
paved  streets  which  lead  to  other  paved  streets 
and  so  on  for  miles — the  fate  of  the  Londoner  and 
the  dwellers  in  Manchester.  So  the  factory  and 
workshop  and  mill  will  be  placed  in  the  reasonably 
sized  towns.  They  may  even  migrate  to  the  vil- 
lage. In  this  matter  we  must  remember  that  the 
increased  use  of  electricity  as  a  motive  power  will 
render  it  possible  to  have  power  supplied  "on  tap" 
at  great  distances  from  the  generating  stations, 
just  as  gas  and  water  are  now  supplied.  Electric- 
ity in  the  days  of  the  Great  State  will  not  be  the 
monopoly  of  the  towns.  There  will  be  no  need  to 
have  a  smoking  stack  of  factory  chimneys  in  every 
village  which  possesses  a  factory. 

There  is  another  probable  development  to  con- 
sider. The  industrial  artisan  and  the  agricultural 
worker  will  not  necessarily  be  two  distinct  persons. 
The  bulk  of  the  work  on  the  fields  is  seasonal;  and 
the  winter,  on  the  whole,  is  a  slack  time  for  farmers. 
A  well-organised  agricultural  system  will  get  much 
of  its  work  done  at  limited  periods,  leaving  its 
workers  free  to  remain  in  the  towns  or  villages  dur- 

62 


THE  GREAT  STATE  AND  THE  COUNTRY-SIDE 

ing  the  darker  months  of  the  year.  The  man  who 
makes  hay  and  digs  potatoes  will  probably  have  a 
town  craft — for  example,  boot-making  or  wood- 
work or  house-decorating — for  a  winter  occupation, 
just  as  the  town  artisans  will  supply  the  extra  hands 
to  allow  the  countrymen  to  keep  their  reasonable 
hours  during  the  stress  of  harvesting. 

Indeed,  in  the  Great  State  the  Town  and  the 
Country  will  be  much  more  closely  allied  than  they 
are  now.  They  will  interchange  their  work  and 
their  pleasures.  It  is  only  the  private  employer 
who  cannot  manage  to  admit  a  fluid  exchange  in 
his  system.  The  public  officials  of  the  Great  State 
will  have  the  names  of  the  whole  of  the  workers  on 
their  lists;  and  one  can  take  the  place  of  another; 
whereas  the  private  employer  has  his  limited  staff; 
and  it  is  no  advantage  for  him  to  go  to  the  trouble 
of  re-arrangement  to  suit  the  convenience  of  his 
workmen. 

Such,  then,  is  the  general  aspect  of  the  Country  as 
it  will  be  in  the  Great  State.  There  are  innumer- 
able details  which  it  is  scarcely  in  place  to  expand 
here.  There  will  be,  for  example,  vast  tracts  of 
State  forests,  which  few  private  owners  seem  ready 
or  able  to  grow  and  manage  under  the  present  sys- 
tem. There  will  be  great  expanses  of  open  moun- 
tains and  moorlands  which  will  be  left  wild  and 
untouched — not  to  breed  stags  and  grouse  for  mil- 
lionaires, but  for  the  sheer  pleasure  of  the  culti- 
vated mind  in  beholding  nature  at  its  most  solitary 

63 


SOCIALISM  AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

moments.  Those  who  imagine  that  a  well-devel- 
oped country-side  and  a  larger  niimber  of  country- 
dwellers  will  necessarily  mean  the  passing-away  of 
the  rural  solitude  and  peace  of  the  woodland  glade 
and  heathered  hills,  are  needlessly  in  dread.  In- 
deed, under  the  Great  State  there  will  be  less  danger 
to  the  sanctuary  of  the  country-side  than  under  the 
present  haphazard  individualism  which  is  produc- 
ing Garden  Cities  and  Garden  Suburbs  of  to-day. 
The  levelling-up  of  education  will  tend  to  a  stronger 
desire  to  live  near  one's  fellows  rather  than  to  es- 
cape from  them.  Also,  the  manifold  advantages 
of  co-operative  housekeeping,  with  common  kitchens 
and  dining-rooms  and  libraries  and  recreation- 
rooms,  will  make  most  people  hesitate  before  they 
throw  away  these  advantages  for  the  sake  of  an 
exclusive  villa  of  the  present  suburban  type.  So  it 
may  well  come  to  pass  that  houses  will  be  grouped 
together,  or  built  on  the  block  system,  even  in  the 
country.  When  towns  are  built  on  healthier  lines, 
there  will  not  be  the  same  race  to  escape  into  a 
rather  unsightly  chaos  of  straggling  suburbs.  So 
the  towns,  on  the  whole,  will  tend  to  be  more  com- 
pact. That  means  that  the  country  will  be  more 
preserved  than  even  now.  The  Garden  Suburb 
will  not  be  built  when  there  is  no  urgent  need  for 
either  a  suburb  or  a  garden;  and  that  will  be  the 
case  when  the  town  is  a  fit  place  of  habitation,  and 
every  one  will  have  a  share  in  the  communal  gardens 
and  be  within  easy  reach  of  open  country. 

64 


THE  GREAT  STATE  AND  THE  COUNTRY-SIDE 

But  on  these  points  it  is  not  necessary  to  dogmatise. 
There  is  nothing  in  the  structure  of  the  Great  State 
which  will  restrict  a  free  choice  of  dwelling-places — 
certainly  more  free  than  is  possible  to-day.  We 
can  only  try  to  foresee  general  tendencies:  and  the 
impulse  of  human  beings  to  group  together  cer- 
tainly seems  a  more  permanent  and  normal  develop- 
ment than  the  present  tendency  to  scatter.  We  all 
feel  that  there  is  something  rather  vulgar  about  a 
suburb:  it  is  an  almost  instinctive  judgment:  it  is 
neither  a  solitude  nor  a  society. 

To  sum  up,  the  Country-side  of  the  Great  State, 
as  we  have  tried  to  visualise  it,  will  be  a  very  differ- 
ent thing  from  the  poor  and  mean  extent  of  small 
holdings  and  scattered  cottages  which  seem  to  have 
such  an  attraction  for  the  Liberal  and  Tory  political 
speakers.  We  do  not  believe  that  there  is  any  per- 
verse twist  in  the  human  mind  which  will  lead  it  to 
waste  its  energy  in  cultivating  little  isolated  scraps 
of  soil  when  the  results  would  be  so  manifold  better 
under  the  larger  and  more  scientifically  organised 
system  which  will  be  possible  under  the  experts  of 
a  State  Agricultural  Board. 

The  desire  to  possess  a  few  acres  of  land,  and  so 
many  private  cows  and  pigs  and  hens,  is,  we  are 
told,  one  of  the  elemental  passions  of  men.  We 
shall  be  more  certain  of  that  "eternal"  truth  when 
mankind  can  choose  between  his  little  Whig  or 
Tory  patch  and  a  share  in  the  richer  produce  of  the 
Great  State  farm. 

65 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

There  are  some  who  say  that  the  small-holding 
system  is  picturesque.  We  think  of  it,  rather,  as 
but  a  slightly  better  version  of  that  most  hideous 
sight  on  earth — the  collection  of  mean  wooden  huts 
and  cramped  heaps  of  vegetables  which  the  locally 
minded  and  narrow-sighted  politician  hails  with 
pride  as  the  "allotments"  and  which  he  regards 
as  one  of  the  glories  of  his  town.  In  the  light  of 
modern  advantages  and  modem  possibilities  we  see 
the  Normal  Social  Life  as  the  disjointed  scraping 
for  a  pittance  it  has  always  been.  Man  has  been  the 
serf  of  the  country-side  long  enough,  and  now  he 
becomes  its  master:  not  only  to  cultivate  it  for  his 
profit,  but  to  use  it  for  his  pleasure.  What  con- 
ceivable glory  to  humanity  is  a  servitude  to  cab- 
bages, a  prolification  of  potatoes  in  the  narrow 
margins  of  men's  leisure? 


WORK   IN   THE   GREAT   STATE 

BY    L.    G.   CHIOZZA    MONEY,    M.P. 


Ill 

WORK   IN    THE   GREAT   STATE 


THE    DIVORCING    OF    WEALTH    AND    WORK 

It  was  a  wise  old  woman  who  sat  her  down  in 
Cheapside  and  waited  for  the  crowd  to  go  by.  To 
the  average  London  citizen  she  is  a  perfect  picture 
of  the  ill-informed  rural  intelligence.  To  the  man 
who  understands  she  had  good  cause  to  contem- 
plate the  stream  of  passers-by  with  amazement,  and 
to  expect  it  to  cease.  What,  indeed,  are  all  the 
people  doing  who  may  be  seen  thronging  the  streets 
of  the  city  of  London? 

It  is  not  difficult  to  answer  this  question  in  the 
negative  sense.  Observation  shows  us  that,  almost 
in  its  entirety,  the  ceaselessly  moving  City  crowd 
is  composed  of  non-producers.  The  centre  of  London 
is  fed  from  about  8  a.  m.,  the  hour  at  which  work- 
men's trains  cease  to  arrive  at  the  termini,  until 
eleven  o'clock,  with  tens  of  thousands  of  men  and 
women,  and  boys  and  girls,  who  are  not  merely  non- 
producers,  but  persons  who  could  not  give  you  an 

69 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

intelligent  idea  as  to  how  any  useful  material  thing 
is  made.  Whether  our  point  of  observation  be  the 
Mansion  House,  or  the  top  of  Ludgate  Hill,  or  west- 
wards at  the  Marble  Arch,  it  is  rarely  that  there 
passes  before  the  vision  the  dirty  clothes  which,  in 
England,  we  are  unhappily  accustomed  to  regard  as 
the  proper  costume  of  a  working-man.  We  are  in  a 
land  of  "officials,"  where  an  enormous  number  of 
people  are  traffickers  in  material  commodities,  who 
eat  without  sowing  or  reaping,  who  dress  without 
spinning  or  weaving,  who  house  themselves  without 
building  or  planning.  From  merchant  to  clerk,  from 
shopkeeper  to  girl  typist,  from  stock-broker  to  com- 
mission-agent, from  banker  to  office-boy,  from  lawyer 
to  doorkeeper,  it  is  a  land  in  which  an  army  of  people 
consumes  without  producing. 

Traced  homewards,  the  individuals  who  form  the 
City  stream  may  be  found  living  in  places  widely 
remote,  from  rows  of  little  houses  in  Tooting  or 
Walthamstow  to  expensive  and  hardly  less  ugly 
red-brick  villas  in  Hendon  or  Woking,  in  Hampstead 
or  Surbiton.  There  spending  the  big  and  little 
incomes  which  they  gain  by  non-productive  work, 
they  support  by  their  expenditure,  to  build  and 
repair  their  homes,  to  sustain  and  beautify  their 
persons,  a  very  large  proportion  of  the  inhabitants 
of  London,  and  of  Greater  London,  and  of  the 
places  immediately  beyond. 

Not  all  these  attendants  on  the  city  crowd  are  non- 
producers.     Apart  from  the  shopkeepers  and  their 

70 


WORK  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

assistants  and  the  menials,  there  are  brought  into  the 
economic  chain  a  considerable  number  of  nominally 
useful  producers  who  spend  their  work  at  the  bidding 
of  the  non -producers  who  traffic  at  the  centre. 

The  result,  in  large,  is  to  bring  into  the  Metropo- 
lis and  its  surroundings,  imports  of  material  com- 
modities which  have  been  either  created  in  those 
parts  of  the  country  where  men  work  usefully  or 
which  have  been  gained  by  commerce  from  abroad. 
It  is  not  forgotten  that  London  is  itself  a  manufac- 
turing centre — are  not  even  food  factories  to  be  found 
in  the  filthy  abysses  of  the  East?— but  the  matter 
may  be  put  in  true  perspective  by  pointing  out  that 
the  London  County  Council  area  contains  only  387,- 
000  factory  workers  in  a  population  of  4,500,000. 

It  is  a  far  cry  from  the  place  of  central  traffic  and 
private  officialdom  to  the  springs  of  British  wealth. 
British  prosperity  is  built  upon  the  possession  of 
one  of  the  greatest  and  richest  coal  areas  in  the  world, 
and  the  British  coal-mines  are  not  situated  near 
London.  They  are  to  be  found  in  the  West,  and 
in  the  Midlands,  and  in  the  North.  Curiously, 
there  are  not  so  many  red-brick  villas  near  the 
springs  of  work  as  there  are  near  the  centres  of  mere 
traffic.  You  shall  seek  in  vain  in  Cardiff  or  in 
Newcastle  for  endless  streams  of  real  and  imitation 
swells.  Mean  and  sordid,  even  as  measured  by  the 
standard  of  a  sordid  Metropolis,  are  the  highways 
and  byways  of  the  places  from  which  flow  the  min- 
eral streams  which  have  done  so  much  for  Britain. 

71 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

What  was  it  that  Jevons  so  truly  wrote  nearly 
fifty  years  ago?  I  quote  from  page  234  of  The 
Coal  Question : 

"The  history  of  British  industry  and 
trade  may  be  divided  into  two  periods,  the 
first  reaching  backward  from  about  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  to  the 
earliest  times,  and  the  latter  reaching  for- 
ward to  the  present  and  the  future.  These 
two  periods  are  contrary  in  character.  In 
the  earlier  period  Britain  was  a  rude,  half- 
cultivated  country,  abounding  in  corn  and 
wool  and  meat  and  timber,  and  exporting 
the  rough  but  valuable  materials  of  manu- 
facture. Our  people,  though  with  no  small 
share  of  poetic  and  philosophic  genius,  were 
unskilful  and  unhandy;  better  in  the  arts 
of  war  than  those  of  peace ;  on  the  whole, 
learners  rather  than  teachers. 

"But  as  the  second  period  grew  upon  us 
many  things  changed.  Instead  of  learners 
we  became  teachers;  instead  of  exporters 
of  raw  materials  we  became  importers; 
instead  of  importers  of  manufactured  arti- 
cles we  became  exporters.  What  we  had 
exported  we  began  by  degrees  to  import; 
and  what  we  had  imported  we  began  to 
export. " 
A  wise  man  having  thus  pointed  out  for  all  time 
to  the  British  people  that  the  use  of  coal  changed 

72 


WORK   IN   THE   GREAT  STATE 

the  entire  character  of  British  trade,  and  made  the 
United  Kingdom  great,  and  in  the  ordinary  sense 
prosperous,  it  might  be  imagined  that  the  lesson 
would  be  so  surely  learned,  especially  seeing  that 
coal-getting  is  arduous  and  exceedingly  dangerous, 
that  mining  would  rank  amongst  the  most  honoured 
of  callings,  and  that  mining  districts  would  flow  with 
the  milk  and  honey  bestowed  by  a  grateful  people 
upon  the  indispensable  creators  of  wealth.  In  real- 
ity, the  mining  districts  of  the  United  Kingdom  are 
devoid  of  every  trace  of  beauty  and  of  nearly  every 
rational  means  of  happiness.  Take,  for  example, 
the  unique  South  Wales  coal-field  and  its  unhappy 
valleys.  Perched  on  the  hillsides,  in  close  con- 
tiguity to  the  pit-head,  gloomy  rows  of  uncomfort- 
able boxes  shelter  those  who  work  and  die  to  pro- 
duce a  little  for  themselves  and  a  great  deal  for  the 
soft-handed  ones  who  dwell  afar  off.  Once  smiling 
valleys  have  been  shorn  of  every  natural  attribute 
and  changed  into  pandemoniums  of  work  and  pain. 
Even  a  mining  manager  in  one  of  these  little  Welsh 
villages — and  how  few  can  hope  to  rise  to  become 
mining  managers! — lives  in  a  small  and  obscure 
house  where  the  delight  of  a  garden  is  unknown. 
So  melancholy  is  the  impression  created  by  these 
places  that  one  discovers  almost  with  surprise  that 
the  people  have  not  lost  their  gift  of  song. 

Wherever  the  coal  is  found,  whether  it  be  in 
Scotland,  or  in  the  Black  Country,  or  in  Yorkshire, 
or  in  Northumberland,  or  in  Lancashire,  there  also 

73 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

the  greater  part  of  useful  British  industrial  work  is 
necessarily  done  (for  work  naturally  gravitates  to 
Nature's  power  areas),  and  there  also,  strangely,  are 
to  be  found  the  chief  evidences  of  an  all-pervading 
poverty.  The  nearer  the  source  of  wealth,  the  nearer 
the  abodes  of  squalor.  The  nearer  to  honourable, 
useful,  and  necessar}^  labour,  the  nearer  to  desolation. 
Who  that  has  seen  the  purlieus  of  our  industrial 
towns,  and  who  understands  that  these  are  the  places 
where  the  greater  part  of  the  material  wealth  of 
the  country  is  created,  can  fail  to  wonder  why  so 
few  commodities  remain  with  those  whose  lives  are 
spent  in  productive  labour? 

It  would  astonish  me  to  learn  that  the  majority 
of  the  readers  of  these  words  reached  this  point 
without  feeling  an  ardent  desire  to  remind  the 
author  of  the  fact  that  a  man  or  woman  who  does 
not  work  with  his  hands  in  the  direct  production 
of  material  commodities  is  not  necessarily  a  non- 
producer.  I  therefore  hasten  to  add  that  I  am  very 
familiar  with  the  fact,  and  with  all  that  has  been 
said  about  it  by  the  long  and  dreary  line  of  econo- 
mists, and  that  I  shall  discuss  it  hereafter. 


II 

THE    FEW    WHO    PRODUCE 

Because  so  many  of  us  are  wasting  our  time, 
the  material  production  of  the  United  Kingdom  is 

74 


WORK   IN   THE   GREAT   STATE 

not  large  enough,  even  if  equally  distributed,  to 
redeem  us  from  poverty.  In  the  Mean  State  that 
is,  the  waste  of  work  is  so  grievous  that  it  is  but  the 
minority  of  the  working  population  which  is  engaged 
in  material  production,  and  even  as  to  that  minority 
it  is  most  unhappily  true  that  it  is  largely  engaged 
in  making  material  things  which  ought  not  to  be 
produced  at  all — things  which  the  Great  State  of 
our  dreams  would  ban  as  economic  indecencies. 

It  is  quite  simple  to  demonstrate  the  truth  of 
these  propositions. 

In  1906  I  took  a  good  deal  of  interest  in  the  pas- 
sage into  law  of  the  Census  of  Production  Act  of  the 
United  Kingdom.  It  was  a  belated  piece  of  legisla- 
tion, and  its  clauses  are  marked  with  that  timidity 
which  has  been  the  curse  of  so  many  British  legis- 
lative endeavours,  and  which  is  largely  responsible 
for  the  accusing  arrears  of  legislation  which  are  be- 
ginning to  tell  seriously  in  Britain.  I  tried  to  get 
an  inquiry  into  wages  and  capital  added  to  its  pro- 
visions, but  the  House  of  Commons,  although,  as 
subsequent  events  have  shown,  then  within  measur- 
able distance  of  a  general  strike  against  low  wages 
(I  correct  this  article  for  press  on  March  15,  191 2, 
when  a  general  strike  of  miners  is  bringing  trade  to 
a  standstill),  was  not  sufficiently  interested  to  order 
a  compulsory  examination  of  wages  and  capital. 
Nevertheless,  the  Act  has  given  us  most  valuable 
if  incomplete  information.  For  the  first  time  we 
have  a  measurement  of  the  value  of  the  material 

75 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

production  of  British  industries,  accompanied  by  a 
record  of  the  number  of  wage-earners  and  salaried 
persons,  men,  women,  boys,  and  girls,  who  did  the 
work  which  yielded  the  commodities.  The  harvest 
of  British  productive  work  is  measured  and  spread 
out  before  us. 

The  first  thing  to  observe  is  a  thing  amazing  to 
the  man  who  has  not  acquainted  himself  with  the 
rougher  measurement  of  productive  workers  ex- 
hibited by  the  ordinary  Census  of  the  United 
Kingdom. 

There  were,  in  1907,  the  year  in  which  the  Board 
of  Trade  conducted  the  Census  of  Production,  about 
20,000,000  men,  women,  boys,  and  girls  engaged  in 
occupations  for  gain.  As  the  population  in  1907 
was  about  44,000,000,  it  follows  that  nearly  one- 
half  of  the  entire  population  was  working  for  gain. 
When  allowance  is  made  for  infants,  school  children, 
and  the  aged,  we  get  a  decided  impression  that  the 
British  people  are  a  busy  people.  And  indeed 
they  are. 

But  what  are  they  busy  with? 

Let  us  see  what  the  Census  of  Production  tells 
us  as  to  the  number  of  people  occupied  in  material 
output  in  1907. 

The  Census  dealt  with  every  sort  and  kind  of 
material  production  for  gain,  save  and  except  agri- 
cultural production.  It  covered,  that  is,  not  only 
the  manufacturing  accomplished  in  factories,  mills, 
and  workshops,  but  the  preparation  of  food  for  gain 

76 


WORK   IN   THE   GREAT  STATE 

in  bakeries,  the  brewing  of  beer,  the  distilling  of 
spirits,  and  the  public  works  of  construction  carried 
out  by  State  departments  and  local  authorities, 
and  it  included  the  value  of  repairs.  It  also  covered 
all  mining  and  quarrying.  The  only  exception  ap- 
pears to  be  the  manufacturing  of  food  by  restaurants. 

Each  employer  returned  the  number  of  salaried 
persons  and  wage-earners  employed  by  him,  with 
details  as  to  the  proportions  of  men,  women,  boys, 
and  girls  composing  each  group.  To  be  precise, 
those  aged  eighteen  years  and  over  were  distin- 
guished from  those  under  eighteen,  for  each  sex. 

The  inquiry  showed  that  about  6,900,000  persons 
were  engaged  in  producing  in  1907,  and  that  of 
these  6,400,000  were  wage-earners,  officered  by  some 
500,000  salaried  persons.  This  is  sufficiently  re- 
markable, but  the  more  closely  the  figures  are 
examined  the  more  remarkable  they  appear.  Fur- 
ther analysis  shows  that  the  6,400,000  wage-earners 
were  thus  made  up: 

United  Kingdom  Industrial  Employment 

IN    1907 

Males  aged  18  years  and  over.  .  4,250,000 
Females  "  18  "  "  "  .  .  1,200,000 
Males  and  Females  under  18. .  .  .      950,000 


Total 6,400,000 

Thus,  in  the  year   1907 — and  the  facts  in   191 2 
can  exhibit  little  variation — there  were  only  4,250,000 
6  77 


SOCIALISM  AND   THE  GREAT  STATE 

men  occupied  in  industry  in  the  United  Kingdom, 
terming  a  man  a  male  person  over  eighteen  years  oj 
age. 

And  how  many  men,  counting  as  men  the  males 
over  eighteen  years  of  age,  did  the  United  Kingdom 
boastof  in  1907?  The  answer  is  13,000,000.  So  that, 
in  what  is  a  great  manufacturing  country — a  coun- 
try reputed  to  be  industriaHsed  more  than  any  other 
country — less  than  one-third  oj  the  males  over  eighteen 
are  actually  engaged  in  industry.  And  not  all  these 
are  manufacturing.  Nearly  1,000,000  of  them  are 
engaged  in  mining  and  quarrying,  so  that  not  more 
than  about  one  in  four  of  our  male  population  over 
eighteen  is  a  "manufacturer." 

Let  us  see  what  addition  has  to  be  made  to  our 
4,200,000  miners  and  manufacturers  on  account  of 
agricultural  production.  To  judge  by  the  last  Cen- 
sus of  1 90 1,  and  the  subsequent  drain  through  emi- 
gration, we  had  in  1907  about  2,000,000  persons 
engaged  in  agriculture,  including  farmers,  farmers' 
relatives  working  on  their  farms,  agricultural  la- 
bourers, market  gardeners,  nurserymen,  dairymen, 
etc.,  and  of  these  about  1,600,000  were  males  over 
eighteen. 

Therefore,  reviewing  material  production  of  every 
sort  and  kind,  save  only  the  trifling  and  negligible 
exceptions  which  have  been  mentioned,  the  number 
of  males  over  eighteen  engaged  in  material  output  in 
1907  was  only  about  5,800,000.  This  total  does  not 
include  the  captains  of  industry,  but  their  inclusion 

78 


WORK  IN   THE  GREAT  STATE 

would,  of  course,  scarcely  affect  the  total.  There 
are  only  some  250,000  registered  factories  and  work- 
shops in  the  United  Kingdom. 

It  is  true  that  we  supplement  the  labour  of  these 
5,800,000  "men"  by  employing  in  industry  1,200,000 
females  aged  eighteen  and  over,  and  some  9  50,000  boys 
and  girls,  and  that  in  agriculture  there  are  perhaps 
a  further  400,000  women,  boys,  and  girls  employed. 
These  additions,  however,  merely  serve  to  raise  the 
total  of  productive  workers  to  8,400,000,  or,  if  we 
throw  in  the  500,000  salaried  persons  connected 
with  the  industrial  operations,  8,900,000.  We  thus 
arrive  at  the  extraordinary  conclusion  that,  in  a 
nation  containing  in  1907  about  44,000,000  of  peo- 
ple, about  20,000,000  of  whom  figure  in  the  Census 
as  "engaged  in  occupations,"  only  about  9,000,000, 
or  less  than  one-half  of  those  working  for  gain,  are 
engaged  in  either  agricultural  or  industrial  produc- 
tion. 

But  let  us  in  particular  consider  the  case  of  the 
males.  In  1907  there  were  about  14,000,000  male 
persons  "engaged  in  occupations."  Of  these  14,- 
000,000  males,  as  we  have  already  seen,  there 
were  about  13,000,000  aged  eighteen  and  upwards. 
Including  both  industry  and  agriculture,  the 
number  of  such  males  at  work  was  only  about 
5,850,000. 

So  that  only  45  per  cent,  of  our  males  over  eigh- 
teen are  direct  producers  of  material  commodi- 
ties. 

79 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

Is  it  reasonable,  or  is  it  not  rather  incredible,  that 
the  labours  of  the  remainder  of  the  working  popu- 
lation should  be  needed  to  transport  and  to  dis- 
tribute the  material  production  of  so  small  a  pro- 
portion of  our  men,  aided  by  a  couple  of  million 
women  and  children? 

Make  every  conceivable  allowance  for  the  very 
real  productive  powers  of  such  workers  as  railway 
servants  and  carmen,  seamen  and  dockers,  ware- 
housemen and  storekeepers,  postmen  and  teleg- 
raphists, with  a  due  proportion  of  wholesale  and 
retail  distributors,  architects,  designers,  doctors, 
nurses,  and  teachers,  and  it  still  remains  a  thing 
most  significant  and  most  unsatisfactory  that,  amid 
a  multitude  of  workers,  so  small  a  proportion  should 
be  employed  in  making  those  material  things  a 
lack  of  which  constitutes  poverty  in  the  physical 
sense. 

Take  the  case  of  retail  distribution.  It  is  the 
extraordinary  fact  that  there  are  1,500,000  shop- 
keepers and  shop  assistants  in  the  United  Kingdom, 
in  a  community  which  numbers  only  some  9,000,000 
families.  That  is  to  say,  there  is  one  retail  distribu- 
tor to  each  six  families  in  the  country,  an  absurdly 
high  proportion.  And  this  figure  takes  no  account 
of  the  carmen,  horsemen,  stablemen,  and  other 
agents  also  concerned  in  the  process  of  retailing. 
It  excludes,  also,  the  retailing  of  coal,  which  is  ac- 
complished, not  by  shopkeepers,  but  by  "coal-mer- 
chants" with  another  army  of  clerks,  vans,  carmen, 

80 


WORK   IN   THE   GREAT  STATE 

horsemen,  labourers,  etc.  And  the  number  of  retail 
agents  is  equally  striking  when  compared  with  the 
number  of  producers.  As  we  have  seen,  there  are 
only  8,400,000  men,  women,  boys,  and  girls  engaged 
in  industrial  and  agricultural  production.  The 
shopkeepers  and  their  assistants  number  i  for  every 
5.6  persons  engaged  in  production. 

And  as  for  the  mass  of  clerks,  agents,  travellers, 
brokers,  merchants,  canvassers,  and  other  between- 
agents,  their  number  is  altogether  disproportionate, 
either  to  the  number  of  producers  or  to  the  aggregate 
of  those  producers'  outputs. 


Ill 

THE    WASTE    OF    PRODUCERS'    WORK 

We  must  not  readily  conclude  that  we  have  even 
as  many  as  4,250,000  men,  1,200,000  women,  and 
950,000  boys  and  girls  engaged  in  useful  industrial 
production. 

For  one  thing,  the  Census  of  Production  was  taken 
in  an  exceedingly  good  year  of  trade,  when  employ- 
ment was  good.  If  it  had  been  taken  in  the  follow- 
ing year,  the  number  of  producers  would  have  been 
shown  as  about  4  per  cent,  less  than  the  above 
figures.  We  have  also  to  take  account  of  short 
time  and  of  the  operation  of  industrial  disease  and 
accident,  which  cut  deeply  into  the  available  work- 
ing time  of  industrial  workers. 

81 


SOCIALISM  AND   THE   GREAT   STATE 

But  these  considerations,  important  as  they  are, 
pale  before  the  waste  of  work  which  is  involved  in 
industrial  processes  that  are  but  the  servants  of 
unnecessary  competition. 

Analysis  of  the  work  of  the  few  millions  of  indus- 
trial producers  shows  us  that  no  small  part  of  them 
are  engaged,  not  in  the  manufacture  of  things  of 
economic  value  or  personal  utility,  but  in  the  manu- 
facture of  articles  or  commodities  which  merely  serve 
the  purpose  of  competitive  selling. 

Take  the  printing  trade,  for  example.  An  un- 
measurable  but  certainly  large  proportion  of  the 
men,  women,  boys,  and  girls  who  rank  in  the  Census 
of  Production  as  working  in  the  printing  trades  are 
engaged  in  printing,  not  books  or  newspapers  or 
magazines,  but  advertising  matter,  competitive  price- 
lists,  wrappers,  trade  labels,  bill-heads,  account  books, 
posters,  etc.,  which  are  merely  called  into  existence 
in  the  struggle  of  various  competitive  sellers  to 
reach  the  consumer.  The  consumer  has  to  pay  the 
bill  for  all  this  printing  in  the  price  of  the  competi- 
tive articles  which  he  buys ;  but  what  does  he  gain 
by  the  mass  of  printing  which  is  daily  thrust  upon 
him?  He  is  bewildered  by  the  printed  appeals 
which  are  made  to  him,  which  are  nearly  always 
misleading  in  some  degree,  and  which  in  many  cases 
are  deliberately  intended  to  deceive.  The  news- 
paper reader  pays  for  his  newspaper,  he  fondly  be- 
lieves, only  a  halfpenny  or  a  penny.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  he  pays  for  his  newspaper  in  two  ways;   there 

82 


WORK   IN   THE   GREAT  STATE 

is  the  direct  payment  of  a  copper  to  the  news-agent, 
and  there  is  the  indirect  payment  which  he  contrib- 
utes in  the  prices  of  things  which  he  buys  from  trades- 
men, prices  which  are  calculated  to  cover  the  cost 
of  the  advertisements  which  he  fondly  imagines  are 
presented  to  him  by  the  newspaper  proprietors. 
One  feels  sorry  for  the  uninstructed  man  who,  de- 
siring to  buy,  say,  a  pianoforte,  consults  advertise- 
ments as  the  best  means  of  discovering  where  to 
buy. 

And  not  printing  alone,  but  many  other  trades 
give  a  considerable  part  of  their  output  to  the  uses 
of  advertisement.  Iron,  copper,  zinc,  enamel, 
colour,  ink,  paper,  string,  gum,  wood— the  list  of 
articles  which  are  built  up  into  advertisements  to 
deface  towns,  despoil  scenery,  and  confuse  the 
traveller  is  a  lengthy  one.  The  workers  upon  these 
things  are  amongst  our  few  "producers,"  but  their 
production  is  in  vain. 

In  recent  years,  the  absurdity  of  competition  by 
advertisement,  which  is  sufficiently  obvious  in  re- 
gard to  what  are  commonly  called  manufactures, 
has  been  imported  even  into  the  domain  of  food 
supply.  Enormous  sums  are  spent  by  competitive 
firms  to  persuade  the  public  that  there  are  a  number 
of  different  individual  teas,  butters,  or  bacons. 
Tea  bought  in  the  ordinary  process  in  the  London 
market  is  put  up  into  special  packets  and  labelled 
with  fancy  names  and  advertised  in  terms  which 
suggest  that  it  possesses  individual  quality  like  a 

83 


SOCIALISM  AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

Beethoven  symphony.  The  consumer  does  not 
dream  that,  in  191 1,  348,000,000  pounds  of  tea  were 
imported  into  the  United  Kingdom  for  the  small  sum 
of  £13,000,000,  or  only  gd.  per  pound,  and  that  when 
he  buys  tea  he  pays  a  tax  of  5<i.  to  the  government 
and  a  tax  of  from  4d.  to  8d.  and  upwards  per  pound 
to  the  host  of  wholesale  and  retail  middlemen,  rail- 
way shareholders,  advertising  agents,  brokers,  etc., 
who  stand  between  tea  at  the  port  and  tea  on  the 
breakfast-table.  To  furnish  forth  the  newspaper  ad- 
vertisements, the  posters,  the  lead  wrappers,  the 
paper  wrappers,  the  boxes,  and  the  other  parapher- 
nalia connected  with  the  tea-selling  means  a  good 
deal  of  "manufacturing,"  but  it  is  manufacturing 
which  from  the  point  of  view  of  economic  production 
is  for  the  most  part  a  good  deal  worse  than  useless. 
I  hope  no  one  will  suppose  from  this  that  retail 
grocers  make  big  net  profits  on  tea,  for  they  do  not. 
Their  gross  profit  is  about  20  per  cent,  on  the  whole- 
sale price  at  which  they  buy,  but  much  of  that  goes 
in  rent,  etc.  The  great  waste  of  work  brings  small 
net  gain  out  of  large  gross  profit  to  ordinary  shop- 
keepers. 

And  if  the  manufacturing  of  competitive  materials 
is  bad,  the  manufacturing  of  rubbish  in  nearly  every 
department  of  industry  is  v/orse.  I  repeat  here 
what  I  have  said  before,  that  rubbish-making  is  our 
largest  industry.  It  is  one  of  the  saddest  things  in 
our  industrial  system  to  see  an  ingenious  machine, 
worked  by  an  intelligent  man,  and  driven  by  an 

84 


WORK   IN   THE   GREAT   STATE 

engine  which  is  a  triumph  of  human  skill,  exercised 
upon  shoddy  material.  The  average  workman  is 
so  used  to  working  upon  rubbish  that  he  fails  to 
perceive  the  irony  of  it.  The  bricklayer  takes  the 
bricks  and  mortar  as  they  come  along;  it  is  all  the 
same  to  him  whether  the  bricks  be  soft  or  hard,  or 
whether  the  mortar  be  good  cement  or  pure  mud. 
The  carpenter  uses  the  timber  supplied  to  him  by 
the  jerry-builder,  however  green,  however  shaky. 
The  weaver  will  as  readily  weave  you  a  shoddy  weft 
on  a  cotton  warp  as  produce  a  piece  of  good,  honest 
woollen  cloth.  Twenty  per  cent,  of  the  material  used 
by  the  British  woollen  and  worsted  industries  consists  of 
shoddy.  This  shoddy  is  worked  up  with  pure  wool 
in  various  proportions.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  no 
poor  man  ever  wears  a  garment  wholly  made  of 
honest  woollen  material.  If  our  workmen  began 
questioning  their  materials,  I  really  shudder  to  think 
what  would  happen  to  their  next  wages  bill,  or  to  what 
sort  of  dimensions  our  industrial  production  would  be 
reduced.  We  are  surrounded  by  rubbish  on  every 
side.  All  but  a  tiny  proportion  of  the  houses  of 
the  country  are  furnished  with  rubbish  and  cur- 
tained with  rubbish  and  fastened  up  with  rubbish. 
The  greater  part  of  household  coal,  which  costs  its 
getters  so  much  in  life  and  its  purchasers  so  much 
in  money,  is  wasted  in  rubbish  grates  and  rubbish 
ranges.  It  is  impossible  to  exaggerate  in  this  con- 
nection; the  reality  is  an  exaggeration  beyond  all 
imagining. 

85 


SOCIALISM  AND   THE  GREAT  STATE 

I  cannot  pretend  to  express  these  things  of  which 
I  have  written  in  statistical  terms.  I  cannot  pre- 
tend to  decide  how  many  of  the  4,250,000  producing 
males  over  eighteen  make  honest  stuff  and  how 
many,  on  the  other  hand,  are  amongst  the  rubbish 
producers.  It  is  only  too  clear,  however,  that 
the  rubbish  producers  are  an  exceedingly  large  part 
of  the  whole,  and  that  the  number  of  people  in 
the  country  who  make  articles  worth  buying  is 
ridiculously  small. 


IV 
A    STARVED    PRODUCTION 

From  what  has  been  said,  no  one  will  be  sur- 
prised to  learn  that  the  output  of  our  mines,  mills, 
factories,  and  workshops,  while  actually  great,  is 
small  relatively  to  the  labour  power  of  the  na- 
tion. 

Passing  from  the  workers  to  the  results  of  their 
work,  the  Census  of  Production  shows  us  for  each 
producing  industry  (i)  the  factory  value  of  the 
output,  (2)  the  cost  of  the  materials  used  in  the 
work,  and  (3),  by  subtraction,  the  value  added  by 
each  trade  to  the  materials  which  it  uses.  By  this 
method  the  duplication  of  values  is  avoided,  and 
we  get  a  true  aggregate  of  the  total  net  value  of 
British  production. 

86 


WORK  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

Tt  is  shown  that  the  net  output  of  all  British 
industries  thus  arrived  at  in  1907  was  £712,000,000, 
or  about  £100  for  each  man,  woman,  boy,  and  girl 
employed. 

This  total  is  exclusive  of  the  value  of  materials 
either  imported  from  abroad  or  bought  from 
British  agriculture. 

Now  let  us  see  what  was  the  total  value  of  mate- 
rial commodities  gained  by  the  United  Kingdom 
in  1907:  (i)  through  productive  industry,  (2) 
through  agriculture,  (3)  through  the  exchange  bf 
part  of  British  material  production  for  foreign 
produce,  and  (4)  through  any  material  imports 
gained  from  abroad  through  services  rendered 
to  people  abroad.  It  is  quite  simple  to  do 
this. 

First,  as  to  agriculture.  We  are  still  waiting  the 
result  of  the  voluntary  Census  of  agricultural  pro- 
duction which  the  Board  of  Agriculture  conducted 
in  1907,  It  is  probable,  however,  that  the  agricul- 
tural produce  of  the  United  Kingdom,  considered  as 
one  farm,  is  not  very  different  in  value  from  the 
careful  estimate  which  was  made  some  years  ago  by 
Mr.  R.  H.  Rew — viz.,  £200,000,000.  Adding  this 
to  the  net  industrial  output,  we  get  £912,000,000. 
We  have  to  add  to  this  sum  the  imports  we  re- 
ceived in  1907,  and  to  deduct  from  it  the  ex- 
ports which  we  sent  out  of  the  country  in  that 
year.  The  whole  operation  may  be  shown  clearly 
thus: 

87 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT   STATE 

United  Kingdom  Increment  of  Material 
Wealth  in  1907 

Industrial  Production: 
Net  value  of  output  shown 

by  Census  of  Production    £712, 000 ,  000 

Agricultural  Production  : 

Estimated  at 200,000,000 

Total  Material  Pro- 
duction     £912,000,000 

< 

Add:    Imports  into  United 

Kingdom £646,000,000 

£1,558,000,000 

Subtract :  (i)  Exports  of  Bri- 
tish productions, 
£426,000,000 
(2)  Exports  of  im- 
ported goods, 

£92,000,000 

£518,000,000 

Result:  Net  gain  of  Material 

Wealth  in  1907. .  .  .£1,040,000,000 

Apart  from  any  question  as  to  the  quality  of  the 
stuff,  here  is  a  faithful  picture  of  the  wholesale  value 
of  the  gain  in  material  commodities  which  the  United 
Kingdom  made  in  the  year  1907,  whether  by  home 

88 


WORK   IN   THE   GREAT   STATE 

production  or  by  foreign  trade  and  foreign  shipping 
and  investment.  The  total,  it  will  be  seen,  amounts 
in  round  figures  to  a  little  more  than  one  thousand 
millions.  When  we  remember  that  in  1907  the 
British  population  numbered  44,000,000,  we  are 
struck,  not  with  the  greatness,  but  with  the  paucity 
of  the  figure.  It  amounts  to  just  over  £23  per  head 
of  the  population. 

Thus,  British  poverty  is  not  alone  a  matter  of  ill- 
distribution.  If  this  yearly  increment  of  material 
things  was  equally  divided  amongst  the  population, 
it  would  not  be  sufficient  to  give  good  food  and 
good  clothing  and  good  housing,  to  say  nothing  of 
the  materiel  of  government,  of  civic  life,  of  sport, 
of  amusement,  and  of  mental  culture,  to  a  popula- 
tion of  such  magnitude.  It  would  abolish  poverty 
in  its  worse  sense,  but  it  could  confer  but  an  exceedingly 
poor  standard  of  civilisation. 

It  will  be  perceived  that  the  facts  we  have  ex- 
amined go  much  closer  to  the  causes  of  poverty 
than  even  an  investigation  of  income.  The  income 
of  the  United  Kingdom,  defined  as  the  aggregate  of 
all  the  wages,  salaries,  and  profits  of  the  individuals 
who  compose  the  nation,  is  about  twice  as  great  as 
the  one  thousand  million  pounds  arrived  at  above. 
The  national  income  measures  not  material  incre- 
ment alone,  but  all  the  services,  good,  bad,  and 
indifferent,  useful  and  useless,  beneficent  and  malefi- 
cent, which  are  built  up  upon  the  basis  of  the  mate- 
rial  income.     The   national    income   measures   not 

89 


SOCIALLSM    AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

merely  the  wage  of  a  useful  boiler-maker,  but  the 
salary  of  a  useless  clerk,  or  the  fee  paid  to  a  lawyer 
for  making  a  woman,  much  more  moral  than  him- 
self, confess  her  failings  in  the  witness-box. 

There  is,  of  course,  close  connection  between  ill- 
distribution  and  poverty  of  production,  and  attention 
was  specially  directed  to  this  in  my  Riches  and 
Poverty,  Chapter  XVIII,  p.  251.  Here  I  will  only 
point  out  in  passing  that  the  ill-distribution  of  the 
national  income  must  connote  restriction  of  material 
production,  since  the  rich  man,  by  reason  of  the 
nature  of  his  expenditure,  calls  out  of  production 
into  the  region  of  hand-service  and  luxury-providing 
a  considerable  number  of  his  fellow-creatures.  A 
better  distribution  of  income  would  thus  largely 
increase  material  production  by  changing  the  char- 
acter of  expenditure;  but  much  more  than  that  is 
needed  to  abolish  material  poverty. 


SCIENCE    HAS    SOLVED   THE   PROBLEM    OF    PLENTY 

No  one  who  is  acquainted  with  modem  machine 
production  can  fail  to  have  been  struck  with  the 
extreme  facility  with  which  we  can  now  fashion 
material  commodities.  The  scientist  and  the  en- 
gineer have  put  plenty  at  our  disposal,  if  we  care  to 
have  it.     It  is  not  the  fault  of  the  inventor  or  the 

90 


WORK   IN   THE   GREAT  STATE 

discoverer  that  only  about  4,000,000  men  are  irregu- 
larly employed  upon  their  wonderful  machines  and 
processes.  That  is  obviously  true,  for  a  large  pro- 
portion of  the  originators  of  modern  industrial  proc- 
esses are  dead,  and  their  inheritance  is  the  common 
property  of  mankind.  Even  as  to  the  living  in- 
ventor, we  are  careful  to  put  a  very  short  time-limit 
to  his  powers  of  monopoly.  The  inventor  of  the 
incandescent  gas  mantle  is  happily  still  alive;  but 
any  man  can  now  employ  cheap  labour  to  turn  out 
more  or  less  imperfect  examples  of  his  great  inven- 
tion without  paying  him  a  cent.  There  is  no  secret 
about  modern  machine  industry.  The  great  body 
of  invention  is  at  our  disposal  with  which  to  produce 
plentifulness,  and  every  year  the  patents  of  living 
inventors  are  expiring. 

To  visit  a  modem  cloth  factory  or  cycle  factory  or 
boot  factory  or  furniture  factory  is  to  witness 
operations  which  win  from  a  wonderful  complication 
of  devices,  and  from  a  division  of  labour  between 
machines  made  for  sectional  purposes,  an  extreme 
simplicity  and  rapidity  of  output.  Each  part  of  a 
boot  or  a  cycle,  however  small  and  seemingly  insig- 
nificant, is  turned  out  by  a  specialised  machine  at 
very  small  cost.  The  accurately  and  beautifully 
made  parts  are  put  together,  and  the  total  labour 
exerted  to  make  one  boot  or  one  cycle  is  marvellously 
small.  Looking  at  boot  machines,  we  understand 
that  a  very  limited  number  of  them,  worked  by  a 
small    fraction    of   the    working   population,    could 

91 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT   STATE 

easily  make  more  boots  in  a  year  than  our  entire 
population  could  wear  out  in  several  years.  Look- 
ing at  a  cycle  factory,  we  understand  that  it  would 
be  the  simplest  possible  thing  for  a  very  limited 
number  of  people  to  turn  out  more  cycles  than  there 
are  people  in  the  country  to  ride  them. 

It  is  not  manufacturing  which  is  the  trouble  to 
the  manufacturer.  It  is  not  the  work  of  his  factory 
which  worries  a  manufacturer.  The  manufacturers' 
trouble  is  this,  that  it  is  so  easy  to  make  things  and 
so  difficult  to  sell  things.  It  is  to  selling  and  not 
to  maldng  that  the  manufacturer  has  chiefly  to  ad- 
dress his  mind.  From  the  point  of  view  of  economic 
production,  the  man  who  makes  boots  is  a  valuable 
worker,  while  the  man  who  takes  orders  for  boots 
and  perhaps  by  his  skill  in  representation  takes  an 
order  away  from  a  man  who  sells  better  boots, 
counts  for  nothing,  or  worse  than  nothing,  as  an 
economic  agent.  To  the  manufacturer,  however, 
the  boot  worker  is  a  commonplace  object  who  can 
easily  be  replaced,  while  the  successful  salesman  is 
all  in  all.  It  is  an  inversion  of  proper  economic 
conceptions  which  goes  to  the  very  root  of  the 
problem  of  poverty. 

The  efficient  machinery  which  has  been  contrived 
to  meet  the  needs  of  large-scale  production  of  every 
sort  and  kind  is,  as  we  have  seen,  worked  by  a  small 
proportion  of  our  population.  Yet,  even  when  thus 
indifferently  and  partially  worked,  the  machines  have 
but  to  keep  going  for  a  brief  period  and  demand  is 


WORK   IN   THE   GREAT  STATE 

overtaken.  Almost  as  soon  as  the  wheels  begin  to 
run  freely,  the  brake  must  perforce  be  put  to  them, 
for  lack  of  buyers  to  command  the  products  which 
can  so  easily  be  made.  The  machines  are  run,  not 
with  the  object  of  producing  goods  in  plenty,  but 
with  the  object  of  reducing  costs  in  connection  with 
a  known  or  an  estimated  demand.  In  effect,  every 
machine  is  run  to  make  one  thing  and  one  thing 
only,  and  that  is  individual  profit.  That  profit  can 
only  be  secured  out  of  the  trade  which  offers.  The 
trade  which  offers  arises  from  the  limited  consump- 
tion of  a  community,  the  mass  of  which  are  wage- 
labourers  paid  little  more  than  the  bare  cost  of  rent- 
ing a  poor  home  and  buying  fuel  and  food  for  its 
inmates.  To  run  the  machines  freely  under  such 
conditions  is  to  attempt  the  impossible.  Each 
manufacturer,  in  effect,  denies  customers  to  every 
other  manufacturer.  Each  is  successful  in  putting 
a  brake  upon  the  machinery  of  every  other.  The 
hat-worker  cannot  afford  to  buy  the  boots  he  re- 
quires, which  can  so  easily  be  made  by  the  boot- 
worker.  The  boot-worker  cannot  afford  to  buy  the 
hats  he  requires,  which  can  so  easily  be  made  by 
the  hat-worker.  Neither  of  them  can  command 
the  cycles  so  easily  turned  out  at  Coventry,  and  at 
Coventry  every  factory  pours  out  men  and  women 
poorly  shod  and  with  indifferent  head-gear. 

As  for  the  product  which  is  actually  turned  out, 
and  supplemented,  as  we  have  seen,  by  exchanges 
with  foreign  parts,  it  is  scrambled  for  by  a  host  of 

7  93 


SOCIALISM   AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

uneconomic  agents  who  attenuate  the  poor  stream 
of  commodities  as  it  flows  through  the  country. 

The  case  of  tea,  to  which  I  have  referred  in  these 
pages,  is  typical  rather  than  exceptional.  To  take 
retailing  alone,  the  average  shopkeeper  cannot  live 
on  a  gross  profit  less  than  from  30  to  50  per  cent. 
His  retail  profit  may  be  insignificant,  and  often  is 
so.  The  failures  amongst  shopkeepers  are  appalling 
in  their  number.  But  whether  they  succeed  or 
fail,  upon  every  article  they  sell  they  must  load  on 
a  big  gross  profit.  When,  therefore,  the  wage- 
earner  takes  his  poor  wage  to  market,  he  has  first 
of  all  to  provide  a  living  for  middlemen  whose  living 
may  be  as  hard  to  get  as  his  own,  while  both  suffer 
from  the  waste  of  their  labour. 

There  is  one  certain  way  of  getting  very  little  out 
of  the  scramble,  and  that  is  to  he  one  of  the  producers. 
So  long  as  a  man  is  content  to  remain  a  useful 
economic  producer  he  cannot  become  even  moder- 
ately comfortable.  If  he  is  worldly  wise,  he  will 
reason  to  himself:  "There  is  only  one  way  in  which 
I  can  get  a  chance  to  make  an  ample  subsistence, 
and  that  is  by  ceasing  to  make  goods,  and  by  entering 
upon  one  of  the  paths  by  which  I  can  make,  not 
goods,  but  profits."  "Getting  on"  is  rarely  or 
never  possible  for  the  man  who  continues  honestly 
to  make  hats  or  furniture  or  boots  or  carpets  or 
upholstery,  as  a  unit  in  large-scale  economic  pro- 
duction. Can  we  wonder,  then,  if  an  increasingly 
large  proportion  of  the  population  has  realised  this 

94 


WORK   IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

and  has  made  what  is,  under  the  circumstances, 
the  wise  decision  to  desert  production  for  one  of 
the  paths  of  profit?  When  there  is  neither  comfort 
nor  honour  to  be  got  out  of  honest  work,  need  we  wonder 
if  so  many  of  us  prefer  to  live  without  working?  The 
latter  course  is  at  least  not  less  likely  to  fail  than  the 
former  and  offers  so  many  subhme  opportunities. 

So  it  is  that  the  inventors,  the  scientists,  and  the 
engineers  have  completely  failed  to  make  tolerable 
the  lot  of  the  common  man.  It  was  in  1828  that 
George  Stephenson  ran  "The  Rocket";  to-day, 
eighty  years  after,  the  great  mass  of  the  British 
people  are  unable  to  travel  any  considerable  dis- 
tance in  their  own  country  by  railway,  for  they  can- 
not afford  the  fares.  The  steamship  is  nearly  as 
old  as  the  railway  locomotive ;  yet  to-day  the  masses 
are  only  acquainted  with  steamships  when  they  are 
driven  into  emigration.  We  possess  in  electric  trac- 
tion the  means  of  spreading  our  town  populations 
over  considerable  and  healthy  areas;  the  people 
remain,  huddled  in  their  grimy  towns,  a  prey  to 
disease.  We  are  one  of  the  few  great  coal  nations; 
yet  few  of  our  people  can  afford  to  warm  their 
houses  properly.  The  mass  of  the  British  people 
warm  their  beds  with  their  own  bodies,  and  that  in  a 
great  coal  country  which  enjoys  seven  months  of 
winter.  We  have  not  yet  the  wit  to  keep  us  warm. 
Vain  have  been  the  strivings  of  the  most  gifted  of 
men.  The  machines  they  have  constructed  have  but 
created  a  new  race  of  machine-slaves,  and  made  it 

95 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

possible  for  an  increasing  proportion  of  civilised  men 
to  live  by  useless  work,  while  liberating  entirely  from 
work,  useful  or  useless,  a  limited  leisure  class  which 
alone  enjoys  the  fruits  of  the  earth  as  multiplied  and 
harvested  by  machinery. 

Is  it  necessary  for  so  much  work  to  produce  so 
much  pain?  After  taking  so  much  trouble  to  faciH- 
tate  production,  does  it  pass  the  wit  of  man  to 
organise  our  labour  to  better  advantage  than  is 
shown  in  the  wretched  material  increment  we  have 
examined,  made  to  be  enjoyed  chiefly  by  those  who 
do  not  produce  it?  Is  it  really  more  difficult  to 
persuade  a  people  to  use  machinery  properly  than 
it  is  to  invent  the  machinery  itself?  Must  it  be 
said  of  civilised  man  that  he  can  analyse  the  Hght  of 
Sirius  but  cannot  shelter  all  his  children? — that  he 
can  achieve  scientific  miracles  but  is  baffled  by  the 
commonplace  ? 


VI 

THE    STATE    ORGANISED    FOR    WORK 

The  answer  to  the  questions  just  propounded  is 
that,  while  scientific  accomplishment  has  in  the  last 
few  generations  been  regarded  as  a  proper  study  of 
mankind,  we  have  not  yet  deemed  it  our  duty  to 
provide  our  people  with  comfort.  As  long  as  science 
was  a  forbidden  domain,  science  made  little  prog- 
ress.    As  long  as  men  continue  to  regard  such  a 

96 


WORK   IN   THE   GREAT  STATE 

thing  as  an  ample  supply  of  clothing  a  matter  to  be 
resigned  to  haphazard  effort,  conducted  by  unor- 
ganised and  incompletely  informed  individuals  work- 
ing in  opposition  to  each  other  for  private  gain,  the 
masses  of  people  will  remain  ill-clad.  That  is  as 
true  as  what  Machiavelli  long  ago  wrote  as  to  the 
impossibility  of  conducting  successful  national  mili- 
tary operations  by  purchasing  the  services  of  con- 
dottieri.  No  nation  will  ever  be  well  housed,  well 
clothed,  well  fed,  and  well  cultured  while  it  is 
content  to  cherish  industrial  condottieri.  Not  un- 
til the  soldier  of  fortune  is  as  much  an  anachronism 
in  the  industrial  as  in  the  military  world  will  there 
be  an  output  of  commodities  of  such  dimensions  as 
to  abolish  material  poverty,  and  of  such  rapidity 
and  ease  of  production  as  to  abolish  the  distinction 
between  classes  by  creating  a  universal  leisure  won 
through  the  ordered  scientific  use  of  economic 
appliances. 

Is  this  to  envisage  as  a  worthy  ideal  a  Great 
State  running  as  a  Great  Machine,  the  well-oiled 
wheels  of  which  are  the  lives  and  labours  of  drilled 
and  enslaved  citizens?  Does  the  reign  of  Order 
necessarily  mean  the  loss  of  liberty,  of  individuality, 
of  personal  choice,  of  captaincy  of  one's  own  soul? 

The  answer  to  these  questions  will  appear  to  those 
who  consider  carefully  the  considerations  which 
have  been  advanced  in  these  pages.  Production 
has  become  so  simple  that,  if  a  people  will  but 
consent  to  organise  for  the  production  necessary  to 

97 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

yield  a  high  minimum  standard  of  subsistence  for 
the  entire  community,  the  necessary  labour  will 
occupy  so  small  a  proportion  of  the  day  of  the 
community's  adults  of  working  age,  as  to  produce 
for  every  one  such  a  measure  of  liberty  as  can  now 
be  enjoyed  in  dishonourable  ease  by  but  a  few.  I 
have  led  up  to  this  proposition  by  showing  (i)  that 
present  production  is  the  work  of  a  few,  (2)  that 
the  work  of  even  that  few  is  largely  wasted,  and 
(3)  that  the  means  of  production  are  now  so  efficient 
as  to  make  it  possible  to  produce  easily  much  more 
than  we  can  possibly  consume. 

In  our  community  of  some  forty-five  millions  of 
people,  there  are  approaching  twenty-eight  millions 
over  eighteen  years  of  age.  It  is  clear,  then,  that  if 
training  merged  into  economic  work  at  eighteen,  the 
number  of  workers  would  be  so  great  as  to  make  it 
possible  to  organise,  in  a  very  brief  working  day  for 
all,  the  efficient  production  and  distribution  of  the 
materials  necessary  for  a  high  minimum  standard  of 
living.  If  a  few  millions  of  men,  aided  by  a  million  or 
two  of  women,  boys,  and  girls,  can  create  and  sustain 
the  material  fabric  we  now  know  of,  in  spite  of  the  in- 
terruption of  unemployment,  preventable  sickness, 
and  avoidable  accident,  what  could  not  be  done  by 
the  entire  nation,  engaged  in  economic  labour,  and 
working  with  the  aid  of  the  most  efficient  appliances 
in  each  department  of  production  ?  One  cannot  pre- 
tend to  make  estimates  in  such  a  matter,  but  I  submit 
with  confidence  that  an  ample  output  in  all  the  de- 

98 


WORK  IN   THE   GREAT  STATE 

partments  of  civic,  home,  road,  and  transport  mainte- 
nance, construction  and  repair,  of  lighting  and  heat- 
ing, of  cloths  and  apparel,  of  foods  and  beverages, 
of  indoor  and  outdoor  furnishings,  of  afforestation 
and  land  development,  of  certain  public  amusements 
and  exhibitions,  could  be  secured  in  a  short  working 
day,  leaving  the  greater  part  of  the  life  of  an  adult 
absolutely  free,  within  the  limits  of  common  rule, 
for  the  pursuit  of  individual  occupations,  researches, 
travels,  and  amusements,  the  leisure  dignified  and 
justified  by  the  ordered  maximum  of  labour,  and 
the  necessary  labours  of  the  Commonwealth  de- 
prived of  monotony  and  hardship  by  the  gain  of 
honourable  leisure. 

But  let  us  endeavour  to  get  definite  conceptions 
of  the  possibilities  of  necessary  order  and  admired 
disorder,  of  organised  work  and  unorganised  work, 
of  law  and  of  liberty,  of  professionalism  and  of 
amateurism,  in  this  Great  State  that  we  dare  to 
dream  of. 

At  the  age  of,  say,  eighteen  years  the  youth  will 
pass  into  apprenticeship  to  some  definite  branch 
of  the  organised  work  of  the  Great  State.  It  is  not 
my  province  here  to  deal  with  the  education  which 
will  fit  him  for  serious  professional  service.  Basing 
myself  upon  the  known  fact  that  an  average  child, 
given  proper  training,  is  the  inheritor  of  the  normal 
capacity  of  his  race,  and  can  be  developed  into  a 
man  useful  to  himself  and  to  his  fellows,  I  postulate 
an  education  worthy  the  name.     I  see  the  average 

99 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT   STATE 

boy  of  eighteen,  not  only  healthy,  but  understanding 
why  he  is  healthy,  and  what  branches  of  the  pro- 
fessional work  of  the  State  are  necessary  for  the 
maintenance  of  that  public  health  in  which  he 
shares.  I  see  him  thus  respecting  his  own  body 
and  the  bodies  of  others.  His  eye  is  clear,  and  his 
touch  is  deft  and  firm.  He  moves  with  grace  and 
precision,  and  his  hands  are  skilful.  In  the  region 
of  acquired  knowledge,  as  distinguished  from  the 
education  of  his  inherited  powers,  he  is  acquainted 
with  the  elements  of  science.  He  knows  the  quality 
of  the  Nature  from  which  he  has  emerged,  so  far  as 
it  has  been  revealed  by  the  sciences  of  geology, 
biology,  chemistry,  and  physics.  He  has  taken  up 
the  magnificent  inheritance  of  knowledge  which 
as  yet  not  one  in  ten  thousand  of  our  people  enjoys. 
By  virtue  of  this  inheritance,  he  understands  the 
physical  world  in  which  he  has  his  being.  For  him 
there  are  sermons  in  stones,  and  good  and  evil  in 
everything.  He  rejoices  in  his  knowledge  as  he 
rejoices  in  his  strength.  His  acquaintance  with 
first  principles  enables  him  to  scan  a  machine  with 
an  eye  of  intelligence.  There  is  no  common  object 
of  that  conquest  of  Nature  which  we  call  Civili- 
sation which  has  mystery  for  him.  He,  therefore, 
understands  why  work  is  necessary,  and  why 
Nature  has  not  merely  to  be  conquered  in  one 
final  decisive  battle,  but  in  the  every  day  of  a  never- 
ending  struggle.  What  imagination  he  has  and 
what  native  powers  he  possesses  are  widened  and 

lOO 


WORK  IN   THE  GREAT  STATE 

deepened  and  multiplied  by  the  knowledge  which 
makes  him  one  of  the  chain  of  Nature's  conquerors. 
Withal,  he  has  read  in  the  history  of  the  races  of 
man  and  in  the  literature  and  philosophy  which 
has  been  the  expression  of  the  best  of  men;  and  the 
structure  of  society  and  the  manner  of  the  governance 
of  society  are  known  to  him  in  their  forms  and  in 
their  conceptions. 

Thus  I  see  the  normal  educated  youth  of  the 
Great  State,  and  I  cannot  see  a  Great  State  based 
on  anything  less.  Without  general  culture  of  a 
kind  which  is  not  now  possessed  even  by  our  ruling 
classes,  I  can  see  nothing  more  than  the  possi- 
bility of  a  Socialist  bureaucracy,  a  Servile  State, 
a  later  Peruvian  Socialism,  with  its  general  order 
of  docile  units  and  its  upper  order  of  a  ruling  and 
informed  caste.  I  do  not  deny  that  a  socialistic 
bureaucratic  State  might  be  infinitely  superior  to 
our  existing  admixture  of  bureaucracy,  feudalism, 
and  private  individual  governance  for  purposes  of 
individual  gain ;  but  let  us  build  as  greatly  as  scien- 
tific attainment  gives  us  leave  to  envisage  the  future, 
trusting  that  we  may  be  really  building  even  greater 
still. 

I  picture  the  educated  youth  of  eighteen  choosing 
his  professional  lot. 

It  is  necessary  here  to  interpolate  the  supposi- 
tion that  the  Great  State  will  express  the  results 
of  the  professional  work  done  within  its  borders — 
the  results,  that  is,  of  that  maximum,  of  individual 

lOI 


SOCIALISM  AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

labour  which  its  citizens  will  owe  it — in  money, 
and  that  the  income,  or  share  of  the  results  of  pro- 
fessional work,  which  all  will  enjoy,  will  be  spent 
in  the  form  of  money  by  citizens  free  to  command 
with  that  money  whatsoever  the  Great  State 
produces. 

— -  A  call  for  commodities  being  a  call  for  labour,  the 
Great  State  will  be  able  to  measure  unerringly  for 
what  kind  of  labour  the  people  call.  It  will  also 
know  what  quantity  of  human  work,  aided  by  the 
most  economic  appliances  known,  is  needed  in  each 
department  of  production  called  upon  by  the  people's 
aggregate  expenditure.  Thus,  in  any  particular 
year,  as  the  youth  of  the  nation  reaches  the  age  of 
entry  into  professional  labour,  a  certain  number 
of  apprenticeships  or  openings  will  be  available  for 
the  new  workers  of  the  year.  It  is  not  difficult  to 
conceive  arrangements,  combining  elements  of  choice 
with  elements  of  examination  as  to  qualifications, 
which  shall  draft  the  youth  of  the  year  into  the 
professional  work  of  the  nation.  The  average 
element  of  choice  will  be  a  thousandfold  wider  than 
now,  and  liberty  in  this  respect  thus  a  thousand- 
fold wider.  For  all  but  an  insignificant  fraction  of 
the  youth  of  our  State  that  is,  there  is  in  practice 
no  choice,  and,  even  where  choice  exists,  it  is  but 
as  a  choice  of  evils.  Narrow  indeed  is  the  gate,  and 
strait  exceedingly  is  the  way,  for  the  son  of  a  Gla- 
morganshire miner  or  of  a  London  bricklayer  or 
of  a  Leicester  boot-hand  who  reaches  the  thirteen 

I02 


WORK  IN   THE  GREAT  STATE 

years  of  age  at  which  he  is  ejected  from  the  sham 
schools  wherein  we  mock  the  name  of  Education. 

And  this  enlarged  liberty  in  choosing  the  way  of 
professional  life,  it  must  be  remembered,  although 
necessarily  finding  bounds  to  its  freedom  in  the 
necessities  of  society  and  the  limitations  of  the 
individual,  is,  it  is  necessary  to  insist,  but  the  com- 
mittal of  the  individual  to  that  part  of  his  life  which 
is  to  he  professional.  True  it  is  that  this  side  of  life 
must  have  its  limitations  to  freedom,  its  elements  of 
compulsion,  its  inexorable  call  to  duty,  and  its  door 
shut  against  escape  from  honourable  toil.  But  this 
side  of  man's  life  will  not  necessarily  be  the  larger 
side.  Every  professional  of  the  Great  State  will  be 
also  an  amateur  of  what  arts,  what  occupations  he 
chooses. 

Again  let  us  remember  that  in  our  forty-five 
millions  of  people  there  are  twenty-eight  millions 
of  over  eighteen  years  of  age.  What  might  not 
twenty-six  million  persons  —  to  deduct  the  two 
million  over  sixty-five  years  of  age — do  even  to-day, 
with  science  and  invention  no  more  developed  than 
they  are,  if  their  labour  was  organised  without  com- 
petitive waste  and  exerted,  not  for  individual  profit, 
but  in  the  output  and  economic  distribution  of  useful 
products  and  services? 

The  conception  of  the  Great  State  is  that  the 
whole  of  the  adult  population  will  be  organised  to 
produce  a  minimum  standard  of  life,  expressed  by 
the  output  and  distribution  of  the  material  products 

103 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

and  services  necessary  to  its  maintenance.  This 
work  is  what  I  term  the  professional  life  of  the  in- 
dividual. It  is  the  performance  of  his  social  duty. 
It  is  a  thing  of  written  law  and  compulsion.  And 
because  it  is  universal  and  compulsory,  and  be- 
cause the  waste  of  effort  will  be  reduced  to  an  in- 
significance, the  professional  or  compulsory  work 
of  the  individual  will  occupy  but  a  few  hours  of  his 
day.  Even  now,  were  the  thing  possible,  as  most 
unhappily  it  is  not  possible,  the  adult  units  of  our 
people,  officered  by  the  small  proportion  of  informed 
people  we  possess,  could  probably  do  all  that  is  now 
usefully  done  in  not  more  than  a  five  hours'  day. 
With  a  universal  scientific  education,  less  than  a 
five  hours'  day  of  labour  for  adults  will  produce  a 
bulk  of  commodities  and  services  many  times 
greater  than  now  obtains. 

The  economic  contraction  of  professional  life  means 
the  widening  of  freedom.  Beyond  his  professional 
work,  the  citizen  will  owe  no  duty  to  the  State,  and 
he  will  be  free  to  do  anything  which  is  not  to  the 
injury  of  his  fellows.  For  the  greater  part  of  his 
working  hours,  that  is,  he  may  be  poet  or  painter, 
writer  or  philosopher,  singer  or  musician,  actor  or 
dramatist,  carver  or  sculptor,  even  sportsman  or 
idler. 

I  cannot  conceive  a  professional  actor  in  the  Great 
State;  I  can  only  see  amateur  actors,  robbed  of 
those  unfortunate  attributes  that  come  with  eternal 
pose,   by  healthy  work  done  in  a  healthy  world. 

104 


WORK   IN   THE   GREAT  STATE 

I  cannot  imagine  a  poet  selling  his  epics  in  the  Great 
State;  I  can  only  see  amateur  poets,  whose  Muses 
shall  visit  them  the  more  frequently  because  they 
are  engaged  in  the  useful  work  of  the  world.  I 
cannot  conceive  in  the  Great  State  would-be  pro- 
fessional painters  ruined  by  drink  and  the  devil 
while  waiting  for  rich  parvenus  to  appreciate  their 
Venuses;  I  can  only  see  healthy  creatures  painting 
because  they  needs  must,  and  painting  what  they 
want  to  paint.  As  for  the  great  army  of  writers, 
journalists,  ministers  of  religion  of  all  denomina- 
tions, dancers,  philosophers,  lecturers,  and  others 
who  now  escape  from  legitimate  labour,  and  from 
their  honest  share  of  what  needs  to  be  done  that  we 
all  may  Hve,  sometimes  escaping  because  they  are 
clever,  sometimes  because  they  are  merely  artful,  and 
sometimes.  Heaven  knows  how,  when  they  are 
neither  clever  nor  artful,  there  will  be  no  room  for 
them  as  professionals  in  the  Great  State.  They  may 
write  for  such  as  will  read ;  they  may  mime  for  such  as 
will  look ;  they  may  lecture  for  such  as  will  hear ;  they 
may  preach  to  such  congregations  as  their  gifts 
may  command;  but  they  will  do  so  as  amateurs, 
and  their  labour  of  love  will  find  its  reward  in  that 
self-respect  and  public  honour  which  are  amongst 
the  chief  rewards  possible  for  man. 

Thus  I  picture  an  amateur  life  of  individual  work 
and  recreation  embroidered  upon  the  main  social  fabric 
formed  by  exertion  in  professional  work. 

The  amateur  side  of  life  in  the  Great  State  will 

105 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

need  its  materials.  Those  materials  will  be  partly 
purchased  with  money  out  of  State  production 
through  the  individual's  ordinary  income  which 
expresses  his  minimum  wage,  and  partly  supplied 
by  amateur  effort  and  exchanges  between  amateurs 
as  amateurs.  This  side  of  the  subject  presents  no 
difficulty.  We  can  see  the  amateur  carver  working 
upon  wood  the  produce  of  State  professional  pro- 
duction. We  can  see  the  amateur  company  of  actors 
hiring  one  of  the  Great  State's  theatres,  and  per- 
forming with  dresses  and  effects  partly  purchased 
out  of  income  from  State  stores  and  partly  fur- 
nished by  amateur  effort  or  by  amateur  elabora- 
tion or  decoration  of  State  materials.  The  poet's 
pen  and  ink,  the  artist's  tools  and  colours,  the 
amateur  publishers'  paper  and  machinery,  will  all 
alike  be  commanded  out  of  State  production  by 
professional  income  and  elaborated  or  worked  with 
in  amateurs'  time. 

The  newspaper  of  the  Great  State  will  be  a  plain 
record  of  home  and  foreign  happenings.  It  will 
record  the  result  of  elections  at  home  and  abroad, 
the  progress  of  industries,  the  growth  or  decline  of 
peoples,  the  judgments  in  cases  of  dispute  or  arbi- 
tration, the  births  and  marriages  and  deaths,  the 
departures  of  travellers,  the  arrival  of  visitors,  the 
accidents  or  misfortunes  in  its  homes  and  factories. 
It  will  not  record  opinions,  or  be  concerned  with 
policies.  Organs  of  opinion  will  be  purely  amateiu* 
in  ownership  and  direction.     An  organ  of  opinion 

io6 


WORK  IN   THE  GREAT  STATE 

will  not  be  published  for  gain,  but  to  express  the 
thoughts  and  desires  of  those  who  pubHsh  it.  Ob- 
viously, they  will  not  desire  to  pubHsh  unless  they 
think  earnestly  and  strongly,  and  for  a  man  or 
society  of  men  who  think  thus  it  will  be  easy  to 
publish.  (As  I  need  hardly  point  out,  there  is  al- 
ready growing  up  a  very  great  output  of  purely  ama- 
teur and  non-commercial  literature  of  opinion,  in  the 
shape  of  books,  pamphlets,  reports,  journals,  etc.) 
The  professional  income  of  twenty  men,  or  even  ten, 
will  command  paper  and  machinery,  and  by  their 
own  amateur  labour  men  will  speak  their  minds. 
If  such  speaking  gains  hearers,  it  will  gain  supporters, 
and  a  large  circulation  will  be  possible — not  a  circu- 
lation contracted  for  with  advertisers,  or  a  circula- 
tion which  needs  must  be  to  give  so  many  people  a 
living  whether  they  want  to  write  or  not,  or  whether 
they  have  anything  to  say  or  not.  Thus  the  organs 
of  opinoin  of  the  Great  State  will  live  honestly  or 
not  at  all,  and  even  the  least  of  poetasters  will  find 
it  less  difficult  than  now  to  produce  his  Httle  volume 
of  verses  for  the  edification  of  his  friends. 

I  see  that  in  some  ways  the  professional  and  ama- 
teur worker  of  the  Great  State  will  join  hands. 
"It  is  my  pleasure,"  said  the  German  municipal 
architect  to  me,  as  he  waved  his  hand  towards  the 
municipal  dwellings.  I  see  amateur  painters  com- 
peting for  the  pleasure  of  decorating  with  frescoes 
the  panels  of  a  new  Town  Hall,  amateur  painters 
who   professionally    may    be    carpenters    or    clerks 

107 


SOCIALISM   AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

or  masons  or  engineers,  and  who,  assured  of  an 
ample  income  by  their  professional  labour,  will  aim 
at  the  honour  of  making  their  own  monument  in 
amateur  work  done  for  their  own  joy  and  for  the 
public  good.  I  see  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the 
professional  workers  of  the  Great  State  will  not  be  as 
ready  to  sacrifice  their  lives,  if  need  be,  as  some 
amongst  out  leisure  classes  are  ready  to-day.  The 
amateurs  of  the  Great  State  will  be  the  labour  class,  and 
the  professionals  of  the  Great  State  will  be  the  leisure 
class,  and  all  these  will  be  one.  I  have  faith  that  there 
is  that  in  man  which  will  build  greatly  on  this  con- 
ception, and  I  see  no  reason  to  set  limits  to  the 
strivings  of  man  under  such  conditions. 

It  is  possible  that  for  long,  if  not  for  ever,  there 
will  remain  many  tasks  necessary  to  civilisation 
which  will  call  for  unusual  physical  exertion,  or 
the  suffering  of  unpleasant  physical  conditions,  or 
even  the  risk  of  danger.  For  example,  we  do  not 
know  for  how  long  the  world  will  be  dependent  upon 
coal  for  its  supplies  of  energy.  Let  us  suppose  that 
the  Great  State  will  be  so  dependent.  Does  the 
supply  of  labour  for  such  work  present  difficulties? 
The  answer  is  that  labour  of  this  kind  will  be  done 
in  the  Great  State  by  sharing  it  amongst  the  able- 
bodied.  The  Great  State  will  regard  it  as  a  thing 
impossible  to  condemn  a  man  to  be  a  coal-miner 
for  life.  For  my  own  part,  I  always  regard  the  de- 
votion of  a  definite  section  of  our  people  to  mining 
as  a  sentence  of  penal  servitude  upon  them.    It  goes 

io8 


WORK  IN   THE   GREAT  STATE 

without  saying  that  the  Great  State,  if  it  uses  coal, 
will  conserve  it,  so  that  coal-mining  will  be  reduced 
to  a  minimum.  That  minimum  will  be  performed, 
not  by  a  definite  few  for  life,  but  by  all  able-bodied 
men  for  a  year  or  two.  Mining  is  much  more  danger- 
ous than  soldiering,  and  calls  for  the  application  of 
the  principle  of  conscription.  The  mining  conscript 
will  go  to  his  term  of  service  as  a  matter  of  duty  and 
with  pride.  In  after  years  he  will  look  back  upon 
his  Mining  Year,  and  because  of  it  he  will  the  better 
understand  the  society  in  which  he  lives  and  the 
relation  of  labour  to  life. 

Such  a  plan  will  avoid  the  cruelty  and  the  waste 
of  setting  a  definite  million,  or  a  definite  half-million 
— for  that  is  what  we  now  do  in  effect  —  to  do  a 
particularly  hard  and  dangerous  form  of  work.  We 
cannot  afford  to  bury  in  a  coal-mine  without  chance 
of  redemption  lives  of  we  know  not  what  possibilities. 
We  cannot  give  every  man  adequate  opportunity 
unless  we  give  every  man  more  than  the  prospect 
of  unending  toil  in  a  single  groove,  and  unless  we 
provide  every  man  with  leisure.  ^ 

Individual  saving  will  be  both  unnecessary  and 
unknown  in  the  Great  State,  and  the  form  of  saving 
known  as  insurance,  necessary  as  it  is  to-day,  will  be 
read  of  in  history  with  considerable  amusement. 
What  capital  saving  is  necessary  will,  of  course,  be 
done  out  of  the  product  of  the  State's  professional 
work,  and  the  only  waste  in  connection  with  this 
capital   saving   will   be   the   devotion   of  a   certain 

8  109 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

amount  of  labour  to  experiment  in  every  branch  of 
production,  although  amateur  experiment  will  be 
plentiful,  because  of  the  fulness  of  opportunity  for 
the  prosecution  of  individual  tastes  and  incHnations 
in  the  arts  and  sciences.  The  devotion  of  the  pro- 
fessional work  of  the  State  to  the  best  materials  and 
in  the  best  way  will,  of  course,  reduce  the  need  for 
labour  upon  capital  work,  since  replacements  and 
repairs  will  be  less  needed  on  account  of  wear  and  tear. 
No  vested  interests  will  impede  the  substitution  of 
one  process  for  another,  or  of  a  better  for  a  worse 
invention. 

As  need  hardly  be  added,  there  will  be  a  tremen- 
dous increase  of  really  personal  property  in  the  Great 
State,  and  nothing  will  prevent  the  bequeathing 
or  the  inheritance  of  such  personal  property.  Ob- 
viously, however,  a  man  will  not  burden  himself 
with  more  personal  property  than  he  can  care  for, 
and  he  will  be  quite  unable  to  command  menials 
to  take  charge  of  an  excess.  Thus  personal  prop- 
perty  will  naturally  limit  itself  to  those  really  per- 
sonal implements,  ornaments,  furnishings,  garments, 
books,  musical  instruments,  etc.,  which  pertain  to 
the  needs,  habits,  and  tastes  of  the  individual.  The 
means  of  producing  professional  income  will  belong 
to  the  Great  State,  and  no  private  individual  will, 
therefore,  be  able  to  control  the  work  of  his  fellows. 
He  will  be  able  to  get  amateur  service  from  a  friend ; 
he  will  have  no  economic  lien  upon  any  man.  The 
citizens  of  the  Great  State  will  be  amused  when  they 

no 


WORK  IN   THE  GREAT  STATE 

recall  days  when  men  possessed  bits  of  paper  repre- 
senting a  fraction  of  a  municipal  sewer,  or  of  a  rail- 
way line,  or  of  a  colliery  plant,  or  of  a  calico  shed,  or 
even  of  a  druggist's  shop,  and  when,  by  virtue  of 
such  ownership,  a  man  could  live  without  continuing 
to  labour.  No;  interest  will  not  exist  in  the  Great 
State,  but  every  man  will  realise  before  he  passes  into 
the  work  of  the  world  that  he  is  one  of  the  nation's 
common  inheritor's,  and  that  it  will  be  his  personal 
interest,  as  it  is  not  now,  to  swell  the  value  of  the 
common  undertaking — to  increase  what  will  be 
really  and  not  nominally  a  National  Dividend. 

The  mutation  of  industrial  processes  in  the  Great 
State  will  be  an  exceedingly  simple  matter.  To-day, 
the  man  who  invented  a  method  of  building  houses 
with  one-half  the  present  amount  of  labour  would 
condemn  to  ruin,  and  in  many  cases  to  utter  destitu- 
tion and  degradation,  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
families  in  every  industrial  nation,  and  the  economic 
effects  would  not  pass  until  tens  of  thousands  of 
heads  had  been  plunged  under  water.  Indeed, 
under  present  conditions  it  is  a  mercy  when  dulness 
of  perception  or  lack  of  enterprise  of  capitalists 
keeps  a  new  process  hanging  fire  for  some  years. 
In  the  Great  State  the  invention  of  a  process  to 
halve  the  labour  in  a  great  branch  of  national  in- 
dustry will  mean  simply  the  reduction  of  the  work- 
ing day  of  the  citizen  as  professional  without  the 
reduction  of  his  income,  and  the  pro  tanto  increase 
of  his  leisure  as  amateur.    Thus,  every  new  invention 

III 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

will  be  hailed  joyfully  as  meaning  either  the  decrease 
of  work  with  the  same  income,  or  a  larger  income 
for  the  same  amount  of  work.  Let  that  be  under- 
stood in  a  community  of  educated  people,  and  the 
spur  to  invention  will  take  us  to  means  of  accom- 
plishment as  yet  undreamed  of. 

For  the  woman  the  Great  State  spells  Economic 
Independence  and  the  end  of  marriage  as  a  profes- 
sion. The  marriages  of  the  Great  State  will  be  be- 
tween economic  equals,  and  only  maternity  will 
release  a  woman  from  her  professional  duty.  Mother- 
hood, of  course,  will  be  the  peculiar  care  of  the  Great 
State,  and  for  a  certain  number  of  years  the  mother 
will  draw  her  professional  income  as  mother,  in  ad- 
dition to  an  endowment  for  each  child,  and  the  child 
will  be  in  no  sense  dependent  upon  the  work  of  its 
father.  I  see  the  budding  girl's  education  in  the 
Great  State  regardful  of  her  supreme  function,  and 
the  training  and  nurture  of  the  child  regarded  as 
the  professional  duty  of  a  woman  both  before  and 
for  some  time  after  the  beginning  of  the  age  when  it 
will  begin  systematic  training  in  the  school.  Thus, 
some  ten  or  fifteen  years  of  the  life  of  most  adult 
women  will  be  divorced  from  the  professional  material 
work  of  the  State,  but  before  the  beginning  and 
after  the  end  of  that  period  the  adult  woman  will 
work  at  the  profession  into  which  she  has  been  in- 
ducted in  the  manner  we  have  already  indicated. 

It  is  not  necessary,  at  the  end  of  the  first  decade 
of  the  twentieth  century,  to  say  very  much  by  way 

112 


WORK  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

of  argument  that  it  is  possible  for  the  major  in- 
dustries of  a  nation  to  be  unified  and  placed  under 
State  controls.  Some  forty  years  ago  John  Stuart 
Mill  wrote  that  "The  very  idea  of  conducting  the 
whole  industry  of  a  country  by  direction  from  a 
single  centre  is  so  obviously  chimerical  that  no- 
body ventures  to  propose  any  mode  in  which  it 
should  be  done."  Since  those  words  were  written 
it  has  been  proved  abundantly  that  large-scale 
operations  conducted  under  the  general  direction  of 
a  central  control  are  not  merely  possible,  but  pos- 
sess such  advantages  in  practice  that  business  men 
have  been  led  to  consolidate  trade  after  trade  in  all 
the  great  industrial  nations,  and  especially  in  the 
country  America,  which,  by  reason  of  the  magni- 
tude of  her  population  and  natural  resources,  pre- 
sents the  largest  factors  to  deal  with.  Thus  the 
United  States  Steel  Corporation,  which  is  a  private 
"State  within  the  State,"  is  a  far  larger  industrial 
undertaking  than  would  be  formed  if  all  the  iron 
and  steel  works,  including  the  iron-mines,  of  the 
United  Kingdom  were  unified  under  a  single  public 
direction. 

The  truth  is  that  the  economic  consolidation  of 
all  the  factors  of  an  industry  in  the  State  eliminates 
difficulties  instead  of  creating  them,  as  was  supposed 
by  the  older  economists.  Thus,  if  we  take  the  very 
familiar  case  of  the  Post  Office,  the  ease  with  which 
its  operations  are  conducted  is  often  attributed  to 
the  inherent  simplicity  of  the  trade.    As  a  matter 

113 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

of  fact,  the  business  of  collecting,  transmitting, 
and  delivering  letters  is  one  which,  if  it  were  not 
organised  as  a  single  unit,  would  be  one  of  infinite 
difficulty  and  complexity.  Imagine  it  organised 
under  the  direction  of  some  hundreds  of  partly  com- 
petitive, partly  monopolistic,  local  or  district  letter- 
delivery  firms,  each  necessarily  having  accounts 
with  each  other,  and  the  jurisdiction  of  each  running 
no  farther  than  a  certain  limit,  more  or  less  wide, 
and  sometimes  overlapping  with  the  area  of  opera- 
tions of  a  competitor.  Imagine,  then,  the  postal 
communications  of  an  unfortunate  people  collected 
by  some  one  firm,  transmitted  through  several  others, 
and  finally  delivered  (or  not  delivered)  by  a  com- 
pany in  the  district  of  the  addressee.  Imagine  the 
charges  piled  up  to  pay  the  host  of  unnecessary 
between-agents,  the  vexatious  delays  that  would 
arise,  the  consequent  restriction  of  postal  facilities 
and  slow  growth  of  communication.  With  such  an 
economic  absurdity  in  being,  we  can  imagine  a 
second  John  Stuart  Mill  gravely  pointing  out  in 
an  economic  treatise  that  such  a  complicated,  such 
an  inherently  difficult,  such  a  vexatious  trade  could 
never  be  sucessfully  carried  on  by  a  State  depart- 
ment. But  this  picture  of  a  disintegrated  postal 
service  does  not  tell  one-fiftieth  part  of  the  every- 
day absurdities  of  our  organisation  for  the  dis- 
tribution of  groceries  or  meat  or  dairy  produce  or 
vegetables.  In  these,  we  tolerate  the  waste  of 
hundreds  of  millions  a  year  in  setting  millions  of 

114 


WORK   IN   THE   GREAT  STATE 

men  and  women  to  waste  their  time  as  unneces- 
sary, and  often  unhappy  and  overworked  between- 
agents,  who  earn  mean  and  paltry  livings  while 
simply  serving  to  attenuate  the  streams  of  com- 
modities which  under  happier  conditions  they  might 
swell.  In  the  distribution  of  coal,  for  example, 
we  have  in  practice  a  case  much  more  wasteful  than 
we  have  imagined  if  private  were  substituted  for 
public  letter-carrying.  It  is  a  case  not  merely  of 
separate  controls  in  each  area,  but  of  insane  com- 
petition in  each  area  between  middle-men  whose 
expenses  are  necessarily  great,  and  whose  ex- 
penses, from  invoice  forms  to  advertisements,  have 
each  and  all  to  be  paid  for  by  the  consumer  in  the 
final  price  of  coal.  So  it  falls  out  that  often  the 
consumer  of  coal  pays  a  high  price  for  the  fuel  even 
while  the  hewer  of  coal  is  obtaining  a  mere  trifle 
for  getting  it.  The  mining  of  coal  by  the  State  and 
its  distribution  through  local  authorities  as  agents 
would,  on  the  other  hand,  with  an  organisation 
much  simpler  than  that  of  the  Post  Office,  put  coal 
at  a  nation's  disposal  cheaply  and  conveniently  and 
with  complete  guarantee  as  to  grade  and  suitability 
for  specific  use. 

And  so  it  is  with  each  of  the  industries  which  con- 
tribute to  what  ought  to  be  the  comforts  of  civili- 
sation but  in  practice  are  the  comforts  of  a  few 
bought  by  the  largely  wasted  labour  of  the  comfort- 
less many.  To  write  a  plain  and  unvarnished  ac- 
count of  what  happens  to  the  milk  produced  in  the 

115 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

United  Kingdom,  or  to  the  tea  landed  in  the  United 
Kingdom,  or  to  the  wool  imported  into  the  United 
Kingdom,  is  to  describe  a  series  of  absurdly  com- 
plicated  and   wasteful   operations    which   in   great 
part  are  as  economically  useless  as  to  set  men  to  dig 
holes  and  to  fill  them  up  again.     For  example,  Colo- 
nial wool  imported  into   Britain  is  chiefly  used  in 
Yorkshire,  but   the  greater  part  of  it  is  childishly 
landed,  not  at  Hull  or  Goole,  but  in  London,  where 
it  is  played  pranks  with  by  hosts  of  railway  compa- 
nies, carriers,  warehousemen,  brokers,  auctioneers,  etc. 
After  having  been  played  with,  and  pro  tanto  raised 
in  price,  it  is  gravely  conveyed,  again  by  competi- 
tive railway  companies  and  carriers,  to  the  worsted 
and  woollen  industries  in  Yorkshire.     But  this  is  to 
imagine  no  waste  prior  to   the  ridiculous  landing 
at  a  port  hundreds  of  miles  from  the  place  where 
the  material  is  wanted.     When  we  remember  that 
in  Australasia  similar  absurdities  occur  and  similar 
uneconomic    "livelihoods"    are    made    out    of    the 
product  by  the  wasted  work  of  thousands,  we  have  a 
picture  of  waste  from  start  to  finish  which  gravely 
reflects  upon  the  competence  of  mankind.     There  is, 
of   course,    no   need   for   such   complications.     The 
Great  State  of  AustraHa  could  transmit  its  wool 
simply  and  surely  to  a  wool-consuming  land  like  the 
United  Kingdom;   here  the  wool  department  of  the 
British  Great  State  would  obviously  see  that  the 
wool  was  landed  at  the  nearest  port  to  its  place 
of  use.     Not  a  broker,  not  an  agent,  not  an  auc- 

ii6 


WORK   IN  THE   GREAT  STATE 

tioneer  would  be  needed;  the  number  of  necessary 
carriers  and  distributors  would  be  few  through  the 
simplicity  of  direction;  the  worsted  and  woollen 
industries  would  get  their  raw  material  cheaply  and 
at  last  honestly,  and  thousands  of  men  would  be  set 
free  from  work  upon  waste  to  do  the  economic  work 
for  lack  of  which  we  remain  poor. 

It  is  impossible  to  multiply  details  in  so  broad  a 
sketch  as  this,  but  something  may  usefully  be  said 
with  regard  to  the  simplification  of  exportation  and 
importation.  A  hint  of  the  possible  improvement  of 
facilities  which  would  arise  between  nations  properly 
organised  for  work  is  also  to  be  found  in  existing 
postal  arrangements.  The  ease  and  certainty  with 
which  postal  communications  are  exchanged  be- 
tween nations  have  become  a  commonplace;  but, 
regarded  in  relation  to  the  great  majority  of  inter- 
national dealings,  they  are  miraculous.  The  eco- 
nomic reasons  for  interchanges  between  geographical 
areas  would  remain  in  a  world  of  federated  Great 
States;  all  that  would  be  removed  would  be  the 
main  difficulties  which  now  impede  exchange.  No 
longer  should  we  witness  such  sad  spectacles  as  the 
holding-up  of  raw  cotton  by  one  set  of  agents  in 
America  to  retard  the  progress  of  the  very  cotton- 
manufacturing  industry  upon  the  success  of  which 
the  real  gain  of  a  cotton-planter  naturally  depends, 
or  of  the  Brazilian  government  arranging  for  the 
solemn  burning  or  holding-up  of  a  fine  harvest  of 
coffee  even  while  millions  in  the  world  have  not 

117 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

coffee  enough.  Nor  is  it  difficult  to  realise  how,  in 
a  world  organised  for  economic  labour  under  the 
captaincy  of  Great  States,  all  the  factors  of  the 
great  industries  throughout  the  world  could  be  co- 
ordinated, from  the  production  of  the  primary 
materials  to  the  distribution  of  the  finished  articles, 
effecting  a  proper  relation  between  the  producer- 
consumer  and  the  consumer-producer,  making  every 
man  a  citizen  of  the  world  and  giving  all  the  world 
to  each  man's  use. 

Such  are  the  hopes  which  man  can  legitimately 
cherish  for  the  control  of  the  Nature  from  which  he 
has  emerged  in  this  one  of  the  least  of  Nature's 
worlds.     It  is  a  control  which  cannot  be  exercised 
effectively  without  co-operative  effort  and  proper 
organisation  for  work.     The  struggle  with  Nature 
differentiates  man  from  the  other  animals,  and  is 
his  hope  of  redemption  from  a  natural  poverty.    The 
struggle  is  too  stem  for  us  to  be  able  to  afford  to 
turn  from  it  to  spend  most  of  our  time  in  putting 
forth  useless  competitive  work.     The  little  world 
to  which  we  are  confined  is  too  poor  to  yield  more 
than   poverty  for  the  many  while   the  many  are 
stupidly  scraping  together  a  little  for  the  few  to 
enjoy.     It  is  not  a  world  of  plenty,  such  as  is  often 
pictured    by    sentimentalists,    in    which    Nature   is 
bountiful  and  men  naturally  wealthy.    It  is  a  world 
of  pain,  in  which  a  grim  Nature  stalks  relentless, 
red  of  tooth  and  claw;    a  world  so  limited  in  re- 
sources  that,   until   modem   science   had   given  us 

ii8 


WORK  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

some  degree  of  mastery,  the  majority  of  men  were 
necessarily  poor.  To-day,  with  the  endowment  of 
Science  at  our  disposal,  we  know  how  to  win  plenty 
from  an  unwilling  world.  We  know  how;  but,  even 
while  we  know,  we  neglect  to  put  our  hands  to  the 
necessary  labour.  To  organise  for  work  thus  be- 
comes the  primary  duty  of  our  modern  civilisations, 
and  organisation  for  work  is  Socialism.  A  State  of 
ill-informed  but  drilled  servile  units,  under  the 
guidance  of  a  specialised  bureaucracy,  could  doubt- 
less do  effective  work  and  abolish  poverty  as  we 
know  it  to-day,  but  it  would  not  be  the  Great  State 
of  our  desire.  The  Great  State  can  only  be  a  nation 
of  free  men,  educated  to  the  full  development  and 
accentuation  of  their  inherent  inequalities,  equal  in 
point  of  economic  independence  and  opportunity, 
understanding  the  necessity  of  continuous  and  un- 
remitting labour,  and,  therefore,  organised  for  work 
as  the  only  means  of  escape  from  unnecessary  toil. 


THE  MAKING  OF  NEW  KNOWLEDGE 

BY   SIR   RAY   LANKESTER,  K.C.B.,  F.R.S. 


IV 

THE   MAKING   OF   NEW   KNOWLEDGE 

It  is  perhaps  necessary  before  considering  how 
this  ideal  Great  State,  which  is  the  common  basis 
of  all  these  essays,  may  best  provide  for  the  making 
of  new  knowledge,  to  discuss  the  question  as  to  how 
the  present  or  the  future  rulers  of  the  State  are  to 
be  brought  to  such  an  appreciation  of  the  meaning 
of  new  knowledge — new  science,  whether  of  extra- 
human  nature  or  of  man's  own  nature,  history, 
and  capacities — as  to  understand  that  it  is  the  one 
factor  upon  which  the  happiness  and  healthy  de- 
velopment of  mankind  depend.  I  leave  this  pre- 
liminary discussion  the  more  willingly  to  other 
writers,  since  I  confess  that  after  spending  the  best 
part  of  my  energies  during  nearly  fifty  years  in 
endeavouring  to  increase  the  number  of  my  fellow- 
citizens  who  have  arrived  at  a  just  estimate  of  the 
value  of  new  knowledge  and  of  the  consequent  need 
for  the  organisation  of  its  pursuit  by  the  expendi- 
ture of  public  funds,  I  am  disappointed  with  the 
result. 

There  has  been  a  little,  but  a  very  little  progress. 
The  mass  of  the  public,  both  those  who  should  know 

123 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

better  and  those  who  cannot  be  expected  to,  have 
persistently  confused  the  teaching  of  the  elements  of 
existing  science  with  what  is  a  very  different  thing — 
namely,  the  search  for  new  science,  the  actual  crea- 
tion of  knowledge  which  is  not  merely  new  to  the 
ignorant,  but  new  to  the  most  advanced  and  capable 
investigators.  It  has  been  the  rule  that  all  effort 
and  apparent  success  in  securing  and  organising 
means  for  the  creation  of  new  knowledge  are  sooner 
or  later  misappropriated  by  those  who  are  bent  upon 
teaching  what  is  already  known.  Throughout  the 
country  the  holders  of  both  old  and  new  professor- 
ships, in  both  ancient  and  modern  universities,  have 
been  remorselessly  compelled  to  perform  the  work 
of  schoolmasters  and  examination-grinders,  and  as  a 
rule  for  less  pay  than  is  received  by  the  latter.  The 
attempt  to  make  the  university  professor  an  investi- 
gator and  creator  of  new  knowledge  (in  accordance 
with  the  dictum  of  Fichte  ^)  has  failed  in  consequence 
of  the  overwhelming  number  of  those  who  are  able 
to  exercise  control  in  the  details  of  these  matters  and 
have  either  no  conception  of  what  creation  of  new 
knowledge  means  or  else  have  deliberately  deter- 
mined that  it  shall  not  go  on  and  that  all  the  re- 
sources of  our  universities  and  all  the  strength  of 

'  Fichte,  in  his  essay  on  "The  University  to  be  Founded  in  Berlin," 
says  that  a  university  is  not  a  place  where  instruction  is  given,  but 
an  institution  for  the  training  of  experts  in  the  art  of  making  knowl- 
edge, and  that  this  end  is  attained  by  the  association  of  the  pupil 
with  his  professor  in  the  inquiries  which  the  latter  initiates  and 
pursues. 

124 


THE   MAKING  OF  NEW  KNOWLEDGE 

their  promising  young  men  shall  be  used  in  the  task 
of  preparing  indifferent  youths  to  pass  examinations. 

It  is  perhaps  natural  that  the  unqualified  persons 
who,  as  committees  and  councils  and  congregations, 
are  allowed  to  control  the  expenditure  of  university 
endowments  should  so  frequently  destroy  the  oppor- 
tunity which  those  endowments  naturally  afford  and 
were  intended  to  afford — to  the  men  who  are  capable 
of  creating  new  knowledge.  These  managers  and 
controllers  honestly  confuse  the  teaching  of  the 
elements  of  science  with  the  making  of  new  knowl- 
edge.* They  do  not  know  either  that  this  making 
of  new  knowledge  is  of  prime  importance  to  the  well- 
being  of  the  State,  nor  that,  when  looked  at  from  the 
point  of  view  of  higher  education,  there  is  no  in- 
fluence, no  training,  no  development  so  important 
and  so  entirely  without  possible  substitute,  as  that 
arising  from  the  association  of  younger  men  in  re- 
search and  investigation  with  an  older  gifted  and 
authoritative  investigator  who  makes  them  co- 
workers with  him  in  some  great  line  of  inquiry. 

Not  only  do  we  suffer  in  this  country  from  the  fact 
that  the  control  of  higher  educational  institutions  is 

1 1  read  to-day  in  the  Times  the  self-congratulation  of  the  Ox- 
ford tutors  and  lecturers,  who  have  given  up  a  large  part  of  their 
long  (very  long)  vacation  to  teaching  working-class  men  and 
women  whom  they  have  induced  to  come  to  Oxford  and  take 
lessons  from  them.  It  is  declared  that  "the  respect  for  knowledge" 
(whose?)  and  the  eagerness  to  acquire  it  shown  by  the  working-class 
people  was  most  gratifying.  Leaving  aside  the  question  as  to  the 
value  of  these  studies,  it  is  regrettable  that  the  money  and  re- 
sources of  a  university  should  be  thus  dissipated. 

9  125 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

in  incapable  hands,  but  it  is  the  fact  that  no  leader  in 
the  State  ever  shows  any  sympathy  with  discovery  or 
takes  any  step  to  promote  its  increase.  In  Germany, 
where  already  every  university  is  mainly  organised 
as  a  series  of  institutes  of  scientific  research  and  dis- 
covery, the  Emperor,  at  the  centenary  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Berlin,  declared  that  he  desired  to  see 
there  more  institutions  for  pure  research,  whose 
directors  should  be  untrammelled  by  the  demands 
of  ordinary  teaching.  After  a  truly  admirable  ac- 
count of  the  splendid  work  done  by  the  University 
of  Berlin  in  the  regeneration  of  the  fatherland,  he 
himself  did  something  the  like  of  which  no  prince 
or  statesman  has  done  in  Great  Britain  since  the 
time  of  Henry  VIII. :  he  handed  over  to  the 
university  (which  already  has  an  income  of  £140,000 
a  year)  a  vast  sum  of  money — half  a  million  pounds 
sterling — for  the  creation  there  of  institutes  of  scien- 
tific research;  and  he  pledged  himself  that  this  was 
only  a  provision  for  initial  expenditure  and  that 
the  Imperial  government  would  find  further  money 
for  the  support  and  development  of  these  institu- 
tions so  set  on  foot. 

What  I  feel  is  that,  in  spite  of  all  that  has  been 
said  and  done  in  the  last  fifty  years,  no  one  in  Great 
Britain  would  dream  of  expecting  such  a  provision 
to  be  made  for  scientific  research  in  London  as  that 
recently  made  by  the  German  Emperor  in  Berlin. 
It  seems  to  me  that  the  present  British  governing 
class,  whether  they  label  themselves  with  one  political 

126 


THE   MAKING  OF   NEW  KNOWLEDGE 

name  or  another,  cannot  be  imagined  as  acting  in 
the  spirit  of  the  Emperor  WilHam.  If  they  were 
told  of  what  he  has  done  in  this  matter,  they  would 
not  believe  it.  They  have  not  arrived  at  the  first 
step  in  conceiving  of  the  possibility  of  such  ex- 
penditure— expenditure  not  to  teach  and  train  pro- 
fessional engineers,  chemists,  or  doctors  (that  is  a 
thing  our  politicians  might  understand,  though  not 
approve),  but  expenditure  for  the  sole  purpose  of 
creating  new  knowledge,  knowledge  pure  and  simple, 
not  as  the  so-called  "handmaid"  of  commerce, 
industry,  and  the  arts  of  war,  but  knowledge  as  the 
greatest  and  best  thing  that  man  can  create — 
knowledge  as  the  Master  who  must  be  obeyed. 

And  whilst  I  feel  something  Hke  despair  in  regard 
to  the  appreciation  of  knowledge  by  our  present 
form  of  government  and  state  organisation  which  is 
far  advanced  along  the  line  of  the  progressive 
"Culte  de  1 'Incompetence"  so  firmly  traced  by  M. 
Faguet,^  of  the  Academic  Frangaise,  I  find  no  reason 
to  hope  that,  when  the  democracy  has,  in  this  coun- 
try, gained  more  complete  power,  there  will  be  any 
change  for  the  better.  At  present  the  "masses"  are, 
if  possible,  more  ignorant  of  the  meaning  of  science 
and  the  need  for  making  new  science,  new  knowledge, 
than  are  the  "classes."  As  I  have  said,  I  must  leave 
it  to  others  amongst  my  fellow-essayists  to  suggest 
how  or  when  the  toiling  millions  of  the  British  Em- 
pire or  of  all  civiUsed  Europe,  Asia,  and  America 

'  See  his  book  with  that  title. 
127 


SOCIALISM   AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

together,  are  going  to  arrive  at,  first  of  all,  an  under- 
standing of  what  the  "progress  of  science"  really 
means  and  what  it  does  not  mean,  as  distinguished 
from  mere  pedagogic  instruction,  and,  secondly,  at 
such  a  desire  for  that  progress  as  will  lead  them  to 
sanction  the  annual  expenditure,  out  of  public  re- 
sources, on  the  making  of  new  knowledge,  of  as  large 
a  sum  as  we  now  spend  annually  on  the  army  and 
navy. 

Supposing  that  very  large  sums  were  available  in 
the  new  Great  State  for  devotion  to  the  business 
of  making  new  knowledge,  what  would  be  probably 
the  best  way  or  the  most  promising  way  in  which 
such  money  could  be  spent  ?  What  sort  of  an  organi- 
sation would  be  required  ?  I  will  venture  to  indulge 
in  a  speculative  consideration  of  this  remote  but  at 
the  same  time  interesting  problem. 

It  seems  to  me  that  what  we  who  believe  in  the 
vital  importance  of  the  making  of  new  knowledge 
must  aim  at  is,  in  the  first  place,  the  selection  by  the 
State  of  really  great  and  specially  gifted  investigators 
or  makers  of  new  knowledge,  in  such  number  as 
lavish  provision  of  stipend  and  means  of  research  can 
secure,  as ' '  servants  of  the  State. ' '  Secondly,  we  must 
aim  at  the  selection  of  a  regular  succession  of  young 
men  who  have  the  gift  or  talent  of  discovery  of  new 
knowledge,  to  be  associated  with  the  older  men  in 
their  work  and  in  the  course  of  time  to  succeed  to 
the  positions  held  by  the  older  men. 

128 


THE   MAKING  OF  NEW  KNOWLEDGE 

Let  me  at  once  say  that  it  seems  to  be  quite  certain 
that  the  special  mental  quality  which  enables  its 
possessor  to  discover  new  things,  to  make  new  knowl- 
edge of  nature  and  of  man,  is  not  a  common  one. 
Probably  many  youths  have  it  in  a  greater  or  less  de- 
gree, and  may  be  trained  or  encouraged  so  as  to 
develop  it.  But  the  possession  of  it  in  a  marked 
degree  so  as  to  make  it  worth  while  to  secure  the  ser- 
vices of  the  possessor  for  a  career  of  investigation  is 
extremely  rare.  That  is  a  reason  why  every  care 
should  be  taken  to  discover  those  who  possess  it  and 
to  enable  them  to  exercise  their  capacity.  There  is 
no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  quality  of  mind  we  look 
for  is  not  as  abundantly  distributed  among  the  poorer 
classes  as  among  the  well-to-do.  The  State  must 
cast  its  net  widely  so  as  to  include  the  whole  popu- 
lation without  distinction  of  class  or  sex.  But  the 
essence  of  success  lies  in  wise  and  honest  selection 
directed  to  this  one  quality  or  gift.  How  can  such  a 
selection  be  effected  ? 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  necessary  first  step  must  be 
the  creation  of  a  limited  number  of  institutes  of 
research  in  specific  subjects  such  as  are  recognised 
to-day  (and  m^ay  be  further  divided  and  rearranged 
hereafter)  under  the  names,  Astronomy,  Mathemat- 
ics, Physics  (several),  Chemistry  (several),  Geology, 
Zoolog>%  Botany,  Physiology,  Pathology,  Anthro- 
pology, Psychology,  Archaeology  (several),  Oceanog- 
raphy, and  so  on.  Necessarily  the  provision  for  each 
branch  of  these  subjects  would  at  first  be  incomplete, 

129 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

but  the  number  would  have  to  be  increased  rapidly- 
after  the  first  institutes  were  created,  and  from  the 
first  it  would  be  laid  down  that  no  institute  was  ex- 
pected to  carry  on  work  in  more  than  a  limited  por- 
tion of  the  subjects  indicated  by  its  title. 

For  each  of  these  institutes — which  would  at  first 
be  situated  in  London,  but  would  be  multiplied  in 
number  and  established  in  every  large  centre  of  popu- 
lation in  the  course  of  time — a  director  or  chief  inves- 
tigator would  have  to  be  chosen  by  the  officials  of  the 
State.  This  would  be  the  most  critical  step  in  the 
whole  scheme,  since  the  entire  future  success  not  only 
of  each  institute,  but  of  the  whole  body  of  institutes, 
must  be  affected  by  this  first  selection.  The  avowed 
and  unalterable  purpose  of  the  officials  who  make  this 
selection  must  be  to  obtain  the  one  man  in  each  case, 
from  the  whole  civilised  world,  who  is  proved  and 
known  to  be  the  most  capable  and  active  discoverer 
or  maker  of  new  knowledge  in  his  subject.  Steps 
must  be  taken  to  ensure  the  purity  and  wisdom  of  the 
selection.  The  effect  of  a  correct  selection  in  such 
a  case  has  been  seen  in  one  or  two  instances  in  the 
past.  In  this  country,  through  the  personal  influence 
of  the  Prince  Consort,  the  husband  of  Queen  Victoria, 
a  really  great  investigator  was  appointed  as  head 
of  the  Royal  College  of  Chemistry,  founded  some 
sixty  years  ago  and  now  incorporated  with  the 
Imperial  College  of  Science.  This  was  Hoffman, 
a  German,  who  came  from  Bonn  (he  was  bom  and 
trained  at  Giessen)  to  London  and  made  at  the  col- 

130 


THE   MAKING  OF  NEW  KNOWLEDGE 

lege  not  only  invaluable  discoveries  himself,  but 
trained  chemists  like  himself.  His  intellectual  tradi- 
tion or  heritage  remains  still  with  us,  although  he 
himself  was  allowed  to  leave  us  and  to  accept  a  more 
honoured  and  honourable  post  in  Bonn  and  later  in 
Berlin.  Similarly  such  men  as  Johannes  Miiller,  of 
Berlin,  the  biologist,  and  the  Cambridge  successive 
leaders  in  physics — Stokes,  Kelvin,  Clark  Maxwell, 
Raleigh,  and  J.  J.  Thomson — exhibit  (as  many  other 
instances  do)  the  generative  activity  of  a  really  great 
investigator  on  those  who  work  with  him.  There- 
fore in  the  first  instance  the  State  must  offer  what- 
ever salary  is  necessary  (say,  in  each  case  £5,000  a 
year — the  salary  of  those  numerous  and  admirable 
officials,  H.  M.  judges)  and  whatever  laboratory, 
apparatus,  and  assistants  (say  to  the  equivalent  in 
each  case  of  £10,000  a  year)  in  order  to  secure  the 
greatest  discoverer  in  each  line,  as  head  of  the 
corresponding  "institute."  In  such  a  matter  the 
State  officials  responsible  must  obtain  the  advice 
of  the  leading  makers  of  new  knowledge  of  all  parts 
of  the  world  and  form  a  judgment. 

Once  we  have  got  our  great  heads  or  directors  of 
institutes,  the  scheme  will  work  successfully.  It  will 
be  the  duty  of  the  director  of  each  institute  to  receive 
a  certain  number  of  selected  "workers"  into  his 
laboratory  (or  museum,  library,  or  workshop)  and  to 
associate  them  with  himself  in  investigation.  These 
workers  must  be  selected  from  among  those  who  vol- 
unteer for  the  career.    I  assume  that  in  the  new  Great 

131 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

State  there  would  be  efficient  general  instruction 
in  schools  and  colleges  of  a  qualifying  character,  and 
that  it  would  be  possible  for  the  teachers  to  nominate 
likely  young  men  of  not  less  than  twenty-one  years 
of  age  to  proceed  to  the  State  Research  Institutions. 
Every  State  college  should  have  the  right  of  nomi- 
nating a  number  in  proportion  to  the  number  in  each 
subject  of  its  graduating  or  final  class.  I  would  have 
the  State  pay  these  youths  (at  present  prices)  £150 
a  year  for  two  years.  I  will  suppose  that  every 
director  of  an  institute  is  obliged  to  receive  six  such 
students  a  year  as  probationers.  At  the  end  of  two 
years  the  director  would  decide  either  to  accept  one 
or  more  of  his  "probationers"  as  junior  assistants 
or  cut  short  their  career.  Every  director  should 
have  ten  junior  assistants,  paid  £300  a  year  each 
and  holding  office  for  no  more  than  three  years; 
four  senior  assistants,  paid  £600  a  year  each,  appointed 
for  life;  and  two  assistant  directors,  paid  £1,200  a 
year  each,  also  for  life.  The  directors — those  ap- 
pointed after  the  original  nominations — should  re- 
ceive £2,000,  rising  to  £5,000  a  year,  according  to 
standing  and  the  approval  by  other  researchers  of 
their  work,  and  be  appointed  for  life. 

A  young  man,  once  admitted  as  a  junior  assistant, 
would  have  an  attractive  and  well-paid  professional 
career  before  him,  his  success  in  which  would  be 
largely  determined  by  the  capacity  he  displayed. 
Such  a  career  should  attract  the  ablest  men.  The 
promotion  of  junior  to  senior  assistant  should  be  in 

132 


THE   MAKING  OF   NEW  KNOWLEDGE 

the  hands  of  the  director,  it  being  open  to  him  to 
appoint  either  one  of  his  own  juniors  or  one  from 
another  laboratory.  The  same  method  would  be 
followed  in  appointing  to  assistant  directorships. 
But  the  post  of  director  of  any  institute  should 
be  made  on  the  recommendation  of  the  whole  body 
of  existing  directors  of  institutes  and  submitted 
to  an  independent  State  official  who  should  have 
power  to  confirm  or  to  request  a  reconsideration  of 
the  claims  of  possible  candidates.  The  post  of 
director  of  an  institute  should  always  be  regarded 
as  open  to  any  investigator  of  high  distinction  in 
the  subject  to  which  the  institute  is  assigned,  what- 
ever his  nationality  or  official  antecedents.  The 
council  or  senate  of  "directors"  would  accept  as 
one  of  their  most  solemn  duties  the  selection  of  the 
ablest  man  as  director  to  fill  any  vacancy. 

As  no  fees  would  be  received  by  any  of  the  directors 
in  connection  with  their  work,  it  is  difficult  to  make 
sure  of  a  standard  of  efficiency  being  maintained  in 
such  institutions  as  I  suggest;  nor  is  it  obvious,  at 
once,  by  what  precautious  jobbery  and  nepotism 
in  the  appointments  may  be  rendered  unlikely  to 
occur.  In  the  German  universities,  the  professors 
who  practically  elect  or  invite  a  new  professor  to 
fill  a  vacancy  are  pecuniarily  interested  in  the  fees 
of  students,  and,  therefore,  in  the  success  and  reputa- 
tion of  the  university.  Some  stimulus  of  this  kind 
might  be  applied  to  the  State  "Institutes  of  Re- 
search" here  suggested,  by  the  award  of  honours 

133 


SOCIALISM   AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

and  of  extension  of  premises,  increase  of  staff  and 
money-grant  for  expenses,  to  those  institutes  which 
in  a  given  period,  say  seven  years,  had  made  the 
most  important  discoveries.  The  pubhcation  of 
results  would  be  at  State  expense,  and  every  in- 
stitute would  produce  its  own  series  of  memoirs. 
Expeditions,  explorations,  and  special  enterprises  of 
the  kind  would  be  undertaken  by  each  institute 
independently,  and  the  budget  of  each  would  com- 
prise funds  assigned  to  such  purposes. 

Such  a  scheme  seems  clumsy  and  mechanical 
when  sketched  in  a  few  words,  but  with  slight 
modifications  to  be  added  as  to  time  of  tenure,  pen- 
sion, retirement,  etc.,  as  to  government  and  source  and 
amount  of  funds  the  most  successful  centres  of  re- 
search at  the  present  day  in  Europe,  such  as  the 
Institut  Parseur  in  Paris,  the  British  Museum,  the 
national  libraries  of  great  States,  and  the  laboratories 
of  German  universities,  are  practically  conducted  in  the 
spirit  of  the  regulations  here  suggested,  if  not  direct- 
ed by  any  written  laws  embodying  such  regulations. 

A  view  about  "original  research"  and  "oppor- 
tunities for  investigation"  exists  with  which  I  dis- 
agree and  should  wish  to  criticise.  There  is  a  notion 
that  a  large  proportion  of  young  men,  such  as 
university  students,  are  capable  of  doing  valuable 
research  and  making  new  knowledge  if  they  only  are 
given  place  and  material  upon  which  to  work  and  a 
competence. 

134 


THE  MAKING  OF  NEW  KNOWLEDGE 

Let  us  make  at  once  a  broad  distinction  between 
the  educational  value  to  the  individual  of  a  brief 
contact  with  and  participation  in  actual  serious 
scientific  investigation,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the 
importance  to  the  State  of  the  provision  of  a  per- 
manent body  of  selected,  specially  competent  in- 
vestigators appointed  for  life  to  high  professional 
office  in  the  public  service.  The  realisation  of  the 
second  of  these  two  desiderata  will  secure  that  of 
the  first  named.  Youths  will  be  attracted  to  quaHfy 
as  "probationers"  in  large  numbers,  with  the  view  of 
having  their  capacity  tested,  and  thus  possibly 
entering  on  a  great  profession.  On  the  other  hand, 
whilst  all  will  benefit  by  the  initial  training  in  re- 
search, only  a  few — namely,  those  who  are  found  to 
be  really  capable  of  valuable  work — will  be  definitely 
received  as  permanent  members  of  the  profession. 
At  the  present  moment,  even  in  our  great  universi- 
ties, we  do  not  often  get  beyond  the  stage  of  produc- 
ing probationers.  There  is  a  tendency  in  our  uni- 
versities, and  colleges  of  like  rank,  for  professors,  who 
should  be  themselves  great  and  active  makers  of  new 
knov/ledge,  to  spend  their  energies  in  inducing 
students  to  do  "odds  and  ends"  of  original  investi- 
gation with  a  view  to  advertising  the  fact  that  the 
professors'  laboratories  or  workrooms  are  full  and 
their  ministrations  appreciated.  Such  fictitious  ac- 
tivity in  research  can  be  produced  by  a  quite  inferior 
"professor"  who  devotes  himself  to  the  task  of 
rendering  "research"  amusing,  agreeable,   and  ap- 

135 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

parently  easy  to  the  unfledged  and  really  incapable 
student.  This  undesirable  form  of  activity  arises 
from  the  desire  to  satisfy  a  demand  for  research  as 
the  condition  of  pecuniary  support  and  approval  by 
the  governing  bodies  of  colleges  and  universities, 
whilst  really  adequate  organisation  and  provision  for 
the  pursuit  of  scientific  research  as  a  serious  pro- 
fession is  withheld.  In  a  system  of  research  insti- 
tutes (such  as  exists  in  Germany),  properly  financed 
and  organised,  the  "professor"  or  "director"  does 
not  make  himself  the  merely  complacent  host  and 
finisher  of  his  pupils'  little  efforts  in  research  (like  a 
drawing-master  who  suggests,  superintends,  and  com- 
pletes a  young  lady's  "works  of  art"),  but  is  himself 
pursuing  a  definite  and  serious  investigation.  He 
receives  into  his  laboratory  younger  men  whom  he 
regards  as  really  competent,  and  joins  their  work  to 
his  in  the  definite  problems  which  he  has  set  himself 
to  solve.  At  the  same  time  the  young  man  who 
comes  to  such  a  head  of  a  laboratory  (or  museum  or 
other  workshop)  with  a  suggestion  of  his  own  as  to  a 
subject  for  investigation  may  be  received  and  given 
every  facility  and  assistance  if  it  should  appear  to 
the  professor  that  the  subject  is  one  which  comes 
within  his  outlook  and  that  the  would-be  investi- 
gator is  competent.  This  system  I  saw  at  work  when 
I  studied  in  the  "seventies"  with  Carl  Ludwig  at 
Leipzig,  with  Gegenbaur  at  Gena,  and  earlier  with 
Strieker  at  Vienna.  It  is  well  known  as  the  system 
by  which  the  professors  in  German  universities  attain 

136 


THE   MAKING  OF   NEW  KNOWLEDGE 

their  results — and  I  did  my  best  thirty  years  ago 
to  introduce  it  at  University  College  in  London  and 
later  at  Oxford. 

What  I  would  deprecate  is  the  notion  that  the 
making  of  new  knowledge  of  any  great  value  or 
amount  is  an  easy  thing  and  one  which  any  young 
man  who  fancies  that  he  has  the  talent  can  really 
achieve.  No  doubt  in  such  work  every  kind  and  de- 
gree of  talent  can  be  utilised  for  what  it  is  worth,  and 
there  must  be  hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water 
in  this  as  in  other  kinds  of  enterprise  and  organisa- 
tion. But  it  is  true  that  selection  of  real  quality  and 
the  organisation  of  leadership  is  essential  in  the 
attempt  to  insure,  by  State  funds,  an  increase  in  dis- 
covery and  the  creation  of  new  knowledge.  The 
notion  that  the  needs  of  the  State  in  this  matter  can 
be  satisfied  by  a  few  groups  of  temporary  workers  in 
pleasant  universities,  or  by,  according  to  every  am- 
bitious and  untested  youth,  an  independent  position 
enabling  him  to  follow  out  his  possibly  valuable  but 
probably  ill-founded  programme  of  inquiry,  must 
lead  to  sterility  and  ultimate  discredit  of  all  provision 
by  the  State  for  such  purposes. 

Another  mistake  which  I  should  wish  to  warn  my 
readers  to  avoid  is  that  of  giving  "scholarships"  of 
from  £ioo  to  £200  a  year  tenable  for  two  or  three 
or  five  years  by  young  men  who  are  supposed  to 
pursue  "original  investigations"  whilst  thus  sup- 
ported. This  giving  of  scholarships  is  mere  waste 
of  money  unless  two  other  definite  provisions  are 

137 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

made — viz.,  (i)  that  of  professional  posts  tenable  for 
life  and  capable  of  attracting  men  of  the  highest 
ability  to  adopt  the  profession,  and,  (2)  laboratories 
or  institutions  of  research  directed  by  first-rate 
investigators  where  the  "scholars"  may  be  trained 
by  association  in  the  work  of  these  specially  gifted 
investigators.  The  present  government  has  pro- 
vided a  modest  sum  to  such  public  departments  as 
the  Board  of  Agriculture  which  is  being,  in  my 
opinion,  wasted  by  those  departments  in  a  sort  of 
charitable  doles  to  "scholars"  all  over  the  country — 
since  no  attempt  is  made  to  face  the  essential  and 
far  more  difficult  and  costly  problem  of  setting  up 
adequate  institutions  directed  by  men  of  exceptional 
ability  under  whom  the  "scholars"  may  work  and 
develop.  The  scheme  is  a  shirking  of  responsibility 
and  a  mere  piece  of  popular  bribery  in  place  of  real 
constructive  effort. 

What  we  require — and  what  such  a  scheme  as  I 
have  sketched  would  provide — is  a  fair  and  free 
chance  to  every  young  man  to  enter  upon  the  career 
of  "a  maker  of  new  knowledge"  whilst  at  the  same 
time  insuring  that  the  definite  admission  to  the 
profession  shall  only  be  open  to  those  who  prove 
their  fitness  for  it  during  probation.  It  further  pro- 
vides that  the  professional  career  shall  be  so  well  paid 
and  furnished  with  the  means  of  research  that  the 
ablest  men  who  have  the  necessary  talent  shall  prefer 
it  to  other  professions  and  means  of  livelihood. 

The   scheme   admits   of   large   modification   and 

138 


THE   MAKING  OF   NEW   KNOWLEDGE 

adaptation.  Perhaps  it  would  be  as  well  to  provide 
ab  initio  that  any  one  of  any  age  may  be  nominated 
as  a  probationer  by  a  duly  recognised  authority, 
subject  to  the  condition  that  two-thirds  of  the 
nominations  shall  be  reserved  to  candidates  under 
the  age  of  twenty-one  years;  and  it  might  also  be 
desirable  under  special  restrictions  to  extend  a  candi- 
date's  period  of  probation  to  four  years. 


HEALTH   AND   HEALING   IN   THE 
GREAT   STATE 

BY    C.    J.   BOND,    F.R.C.S. 


V 

HEALTH    AND    HEALING    IN    THE 
GREAT    STATE 


HEALTH 

The  twofold  object  of  the  following  essay  is  to 
put  forward  a  worthy  conception  of  Health  in  its 
widest  and  fullest  sense,  and  to  sketch  in  brief  out- 
line some  of  the  possibilities  which  will  exist  in  the 
coming  time  for  the  attainment  of  a  healthier  Life 
by  the  citizens  of  the  Great  State. 

What  then  must  be  our  conception  of  Health? 

Knowledge  concerning  disease  has  increased  so 
much  in  recent  years,  and  the  focussing  of  individual 
and  public  attention  on  disease  organisms  and  in- 
sanitary surroundings  has  been  so  keen,  that  there 
exists  to-day  a  real  danger  of  our  losing  sight  of  the 
true  proportions  of  the  Health  Problem.  We  are 
apt  to  forget  that,  while  the  Healthy  Life  includes 
recovery  from  the  attacks  of  disease  organisms,  it 
should  also  for  the  citizens  of  the  modern  State 
embrace  resistance  to  every  one  of  the  injurious 

143 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

influences  in  the  environment  which  tend  to  depress 
vital  activity  or  to  direct  it  into  wrong  channels. 
And  it  includes  even  more  than  this.  Health  is  more 
than  mere  existence:  it  means  in  its  widest  sense 
''Joy  in  Life'';  it  presupposes  a  capacity  of  response 
to  the  beautiful,  the  health-giving,  the  soul-elevating 
stimuli  of  the  surrounding  world,  as  well  as  the  power 
of  overcoming  the  depressing  factors  which  make  for 
disease. 

This  is  no  merely  modern  view.  Let  us  glance  for  a 
moment  at  the  attitude  of  the  old  Greeks  to  this  same 
problem.  The  citizens  of  Athens  in  her  best  days 
conceived  of  the  true,  the  healthy  Life  as  a  har- 
monious development  of  mental  and  bodily  powers, 
and  as  a  true  adjustment  of  the  man  to  his  environ- 
ment. Self-realisation  meant  to  the  Greek  the  union 
of  a  virtuous  soul  in  a  beautifiil  body,  and  this  was 
the  outcome  of  the  ordered  use  of  natural  faculties 
under  the  control  of  a  well-balanced  mind.  It  is 
difficult  for  us  to  realise  the  conditions  of  life  which 
prevailed  among  the  slave  population  in  the  poorer 
quarters  of  ancient  Athens  and  imperial  Rome. 
We  have  reason  to  think  that  the  less  fortunate 
inhabitants  of  even  these  noble  cities  were  familiar 
with  squalor,  with  poverty  and  disease;  but  in  spite 
of  this  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  if  the  free 
Greek  or  Roman  citizen  were  to  catch  a  glimpse  of 
life  in  our  crowded  cities  to-day,  though  he  would 
be  lost  in  wonder  at  the  industrial  activity,  at  the 
care  for  the  sick  and  the  suffering,  and  at  the  com- 

144 


HEALTH  AND  HEALING  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

plexity  of  our  modern  life,  he  would  no  less  certainly 
marvel  at  the  dim  eye,  the  inelastic  step,  the  listless 
demeanour  of  many  of  our  toiling  workers — and  he 
would  read  in  these  tokens  the  signs  of  a  reduced 
vitality,  of  a  lost  joyous  activity,  and  of  an  absence 
of  that  Harmony  to  which  he  was  so  deeply  attached. 
Highly  trained  in  physical  culture,  familiar  with 
fountains  and  baths,  he  would  wonder  also  at  the 
lack  of  personal  cleanliness,  the  dirt,  the  ugliness  of 
our  surroundings,  the  evidences  of  monotonous  toil, 
and  he  would  search  in  vain  in  our  crowded  courts 
and  sunless  streets  for  the  grace  of  movement  and 
the  dignity  of  bearing  which  come  from  life  in  the 
air  and  the  sun.  And  he  would  marvel  yet  more 
when  he  learned  that  those  whom  he  met  were  not 
slaves,  but  free  citizens,  and  that  they  might,  if 
they  wished,  be  rulers  in  their  own  city  and  masters  in 
their  own  homes. 

But,  after  all,  this  Life  of  Health  and  Harmony  and 
full  development  was  only  realised  by  a  small  portion 
of  the  Greek  community.  In  spite  of  its  democratic 
form  of  government,  the  "Many,"  even  in  Athens, 
never  lived  the  fuller  Life,  and  this  was  indeed  one 
of  the  causes  of  her  fall.  We  now  realise  that  the 
possibility  of  a  healthy  and  happy  Life  must  be  within 
the  reach  of  every  citizen,  rich  and  poor,  in  every 
community  if  that  community  is  to  escape  the 
stagnation  and  decay  which  eventually  overtook 
these  ancient  civilisations.  The  Greek  knew  but 
little  of  the  evolution  of  Human  societies;  he  was 

145 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

ignorant  of  the  forces  which  control  organic  develop- 
ment and  of  the  real  causes  of  disease  and  decay. 
Although  we  may  fail  to  apply  our  knowledge,  we, 
on  the  other  hand,  do  at  any  rate  know  to-day  that 
Health  depends  on  successful  adaptation,  on  adjust- 
ment to  a  very  complex  social  as  well  as  natural 
environment,  and  we  are  beginning  to  realise  that 
Perfect  Health  means  living  in  harmony  with  all  that 
is  best  in  our  physical,  intellectual,  social,  and  moral 
atmosphere. 

If,  then,  modern  life  is  the  outcome  of  ages  of  evolu- 
tion and  struggle,  if  healthy  Life  is  a  matter  of 
adjustment  to  both  good  and  bad  stimuli,  then  the 
pursuit  of  Health  must  be  carried  out  in  accordance 
with  the  laws  which  control  Hereditary  capacity  and 
Adaptive  Response  in  other  fields  of  human  activity. 

Neither  are  we  left  in  entire  ignorance  as  to  what 
these  life-controlling  forces  are.  We  know  that  all 
adaptation,  all  individual  and  social  development, 
depends  on  the  mutual  interaction  of  certain  factors. 
These  are : 

(i).  Hereditarily  transmitted  capacity  to  re- 
spond in  different  ways  and  in  different  de- 
grees to  different  environmental  stimuli. 

(2).  The  Conditions  under  which  this  Capacity 
is  exercised. 

(3).  The  Acquirements  which  are  made  by 
the  individual  or  the  Community  as  the  result 
of  the  exercise  of  this  capacity  of  Response. 

146 


HEALTH  AND  HEALING  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

And 

(4).  The  various  Environmental  Stimuli  which 
have  to  be  responded  to,  the  factors  towards 
which  adjustment  has  to  be  made. 

These  are  the  biological  foundations  on  which  the 
truly  Healthy  Life  must  be  built.  These  are  the 
factors  with  which  all  who  attempt  to  reconstruct 
Human  Society  must  reckon,  and  it  is  on  these  lines 
that  the  interests  of  the  citizen  must  be  promoted 
and  secured  in  the  Great  State.  We  must  safeguard 
the  supply  of  innate  individual  Capacity.  We  must 
stimulate  the  exercise  of  this  Capacity  in  all  healthy 
directions.  We  must  improve  the  conditions  under 
which  the  Response  of  Life  is  carried  on.  We  must 
utilise  to  the  utmost  the  Acquirements  already  made. 
But  this  means  that  we  must  deal  with  both  the  in- 
dividual and  his  environment,  we  must  invoke  the 
aid  of  Individualism  as  well  as  Socialism  in  the 
Great  State.  Now  if  it  be  true,  as  it  undoubtedly  is, 
that  the  conditions  of  modern  industrial  life  tend  to 
depress  rather  than  call  forth  the  highest  activities  of 
our  citizens;  and  if  it  be  also  true,  as  we  know  it  to 
be,  that,  while  the  individual  does  to  a  certain  extent 
control  his  environment,  the  environment  also  helps 
to  determine  the  type  of  individual,  then  we  must 
recognise  the  disquieting  fact  that  present-day  condi- 
tions of  Life  in  our  large  cities,  although  they  may  be 
consistent  with  a  low  death-rate,  do  not  make  for 
national  health  in  its  widest  and  best  sense.     Bc- 

147 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

fore  we  can  set  up  a  standard  of  Life  worthy  of  the 
citizens  of  the  Great  State,  two  things  must  happen. 
Individual  capacity  to  live  the  fuller  life  must  be 
further  developed,  and  the  conditions  under  which 
this  capacity  for  wider  existence  is  exercised  must 
be  vastly  mproved  at  both  ends  of  the  social  scale. 
If  then,  bearing  in  mind  our  biological  limitations, 
we  define  Perfect  Health  as  that  state  of  body  and 
mind  which  is  most  resistent  to  injurious  and  most 
responsive  to  beneficial  stimuli,  we  see  at  once  that 
it  is  not  enough  to  banish  disease  organisms  or  to 
bring  about  immunity  against  infection.  We  must 
not  rest  content  with  the  removal  and  purification  of 
sewage,  with  the  regulation  of  food  and  water  supply, 
the  ventilation  of  factories,  and  the  control  of  un- 
healthy occupations  and  of  licensed  houses,  we  must 
do  these  things,  but  we  must  also  insure  that  the  at- 
mosphere of  the  Home  and  the  Workroom  is  flooded 
with  moral  sunshine;  we  must  strive  by  intellectual 
effort  and  by  artistic  surroundings  to  prevent  atrophy 
of  mind  as  well  as  stunting  of  bodily  stature. 

It  is  here  that  we  come  in  contact  with  all  that  is 
meant  by  Education,  with  Ethical  training,  with 
Intellectual  culture,  with  progressive  Legislation — 
in  fact,  with  all  the  factors  which  make  for  human 
progress.  Judged  by  this  standard,  the  parent,  the 
schoolmaster,  the  artist,  the  man  of  science,  the  re- 
ligious instructor,  the  municipa'  councillor,  the 
legislator,  all  are  or  should  be  physicians  of  the  mind 
or  of  the  body. 

148 


HEALTH  AND  HEALING  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

For  there  are  only  two  ways  of  bringing  about 
harmonious  adjustment  in  matters  of  Hfe  and  con- 
duct as  well  as  in  matters  of  health.  We  must 
either  adapt  ourselves  to  our  surroundings,  or  we 
must  adapt  our  surroundings  to  ourselves.  The 
first  is  the  method  of  primitive  organic  evolution. 
Whereas  it  is  by  the  second  method  that  social  man 
has  been  enabled  to  surround  himself  with  the  com- 
plex environment  of  civilisation  and  with  the  possi- 
bilities of  physical  and  psychical  development  that 
civilisation  brings. 

There  is  no  more  striking  object-lesson  in  the 
different  application  of  these  two  evolutionary 
methods  than  that  which  is  afforded  by  the  atti- 
tude of  civilised  and  uncivilised  societies  respec- 
tively to  harmful  environmental  agencies  like  alcohol 
and  disease.  In  the  primitive  community,  mutual 
protection  and  co-operation  (the  conditions  which 
favour  recovery  from  disease)  hardly  exist.  If 
primitive  man,  like  the  animal,  contracts  disease, 
he  perishes,  hence  he  must  be  preadapted,  and 
through  the  stern  process  of  natural  selection  in 
weeding  out  susceptible  individuals  he  has  evolved 
an  innate  resistance  to  those  diseases  of  which  he 
has  had  sufficient  racial  experience.  But  with  so- 
cial man  it  is  different;  improved  medical  treatment, 
mutual  protection,  and  care  during  sickness  all 
favour  recovery  from  disease.  It  follows  that  the 
necessity  for  being  Immune  by  nature  grows  less 
as  the  possibility  of  becoming  Immune  by  Art  grows 

149 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

greater.  Hence  it  comes  about  that  civilised  man 
has  evolved  a  capacity  of  acquiring  Immunity  by 
individual  experience  in  such  diseases  as  allow  of 
recovery,  while  he  still  retains  some  of  the  natural 
Immunity  against  lethal  diseases  possessed  by  his 
earlier  ancestors. 

One  long  chapter  in  the  history  of  civilisation 
contains  the  record  of  the  gradually  increasing  power 
of  control  by  Social  man  over  that  part  of  his  en- 
vironment which  has  to  do  with  disease,  and  the 
success  which  has  attended  his  efforts  to  banish 
disease  must  provide  the  sanction  for  further  effort 
along  these  same  lines  of  environmental  control. 
But  such  methods  take  us  further  and  further  away 
from  crude  natural  selection.  Constant  vigilance 
on  the  part  of  Society  is  urgently  needed  if  we  are  to 
escape  the  dangers  of  decadence  of  capacity  and  re- 
laxation of  individual  effort  which  modem  social 
conditions  render  possible.  Moreover,  such  methods 
depend  on  mutual  co-operation  and  they  involve  some 
curtailment  of  individual  liberty.  For  this  reason 
in  the  coming  age  it  will  be  wrong  to  be  ill  if  the  ill- 
ness be  avoidable.  Under  the  old  regime  of  natural 
selection  the  penalty  for  non-adaptation  was  extinc- 
tion, and,  though  under  the  new  regime  of  mutual  co- 
operation and  environmental  control  destruction  may 
be  avoided,  yet  some  sort  of  penalty  must  still  remain ; 
either  the  individual  or  society  or  both  must  suffer  in 
the  long  run  for  the  lack  of  efficiency  and  the  want  of 
adaptation  which  ill  health  implies.    As  under  the  old 

ISO 


HEALTH  AND  HEALING  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

regime  so  under  the  new,  the  price  of  harmonious 
adaptation  to  a  widening  environment — ^in  other 
words,  the  price  of  health  in  a  progressive  com- 
munity— is  constant  vigilance.  Unless  the  citizen  is 
immune  by  nature,  or  unless  he  becomes  immune  by 
Art,  or  until  the  organisms  of  disease  are  permanently 
banished  from  the  environment  of  the  Great  State, 
the  struggle  must  still  continue,  though  the  methods 
of  warfare  may  become  far  less  cruel.  And  when 
the  victory  is  secured,  one  result,  and  that  perhaps 
the  greatest,  will  be  the  setting  free  of  a  larger 
volume  of  vital  energy  in  new  departments  of  Life 
and  Labour,  new  springs  of  Being,  new  responses 
to  higher  calls  in  religion,  science,  and  art,  and  then 
will  gush  forth  again  the  eternal  fountain  of  hope 
and  of  joy  in  Life,  which  has  now  for  a  season  sunk 
so  low. 

Our  very  familiarity  with  suffering  and  dis- 
harmony has  clouded  our  vision:  we  accept  the 
presence  of  disease  as  necessary,  and  we  forget  the 
enormous  waste  of  human  life  which  these  ages  of 
wandering  in  the  wilderness  of  disease  have  caused. 
We  can  with  difficulty  gauge  the  gain  in  capacity  for 
productive  labour  that  the  saving  of  even  a  few  in- 
fant lives  implies.  Ignorance  and  Vice,  Vice-caused 
disease  and  disease-produced  Vice — these  have  also 
contributed  towards  the  bankruptcy  in  Health 
of  our  city  toilers  and  city  dwellers.  Disease  and 
Poverty,  leanness  of  body  and  leanness  of  soul, 
these  work  hand  in  hand,  and  these  also  must  dis- 

151 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

appear  in  the  Great  State  in  the  new  era  of  Free 
Trade  in  human  capacity  as  well  as  in  material 
possessions. 

But  besides  these  failures  in  adjustment  to 
diseases  which  come  from  without,  there  are  also 
disharmonies  which  come  from  within.  There  are 
deficient  capacities  as  well  as  injurious  surroundings, 
there  are  errors  in  individual  development  of  an 
hereditary  kind. 

These  inborn  deficiencies  represent  isolated  flaws 
in  that  mosaic  pattern  of  mental  and  bodily  con- 
stitution which  recent  biological  research  tells  us  is 
the  hereditary  equipment  of  each  individual;  they 
may  even  represent  a  total  failure  in  hereditary 
design,  such  as  we  find  in  the  innately  criminal  and 
the  congenitally  feeble-minded.  For  such  as  these 
there  will  be  neither  use  nor  room  in  the  Great  State. 
Even  now  the  problem  of  how  to  eliminate  this 
residuum  of  human  Unimprovability  urgently  presses 
for  solution.  The  drain  of  unproductive  existence 
on  productive  activity  is  already  far  too  great,  far 
greater  than  is  necessary,  as  we  believe,  to  favour 
the  growth  or  to  call  forth  the  exercise  of  benevo- 
lence. The  altruistic  feelings  of  mankind  can  be 
more  efficiently  promoted  by  exercise  in  other  fields 
and  on  worthier  objects. 

Man  has  no  more  power  to  overtake  the  results  of 
anti-social  conduct  in  the  field  of  race  production 
than  in  any  other  field  of  human  activity.  Here,  as 
elsewhere,  the  only  way  of  escape  is  to  set  about  the 

152 


HEALTH  AND  HEALING  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

elimination  of  capacity  for  anti-social  conduct,  or,  if 
this  be  as  yet  impossible,  to  prevent  as  far  as  may 
be  its  exercise  by  those  unfortunate  individuals  who 
inherit  it.  Our  hope  of  success  lies,  not  in  a  return 
to  the  old  regime  of  natural  selection,  but  in  an  ex- 
tension of  the  newer  method  of  environmental  con- 
trol. We  must  learn,  and  that  quickly,  to  apply  to 
the  problem  of  Race  Culture  those  methods  which 
we  have  already  employed  successfully  in  our 
struggle  with  disease.  If,  owing  to  lack  of  knowl- 
edge, further  advance  along  Positive  Eugenic  lines 
should  be  at  present  too  difficult,  we  can  at  any  rate 
make  a  beginning  by  preventing  the  perpetuation 
of  those  characters  which  lead  to  race  destruction. 

It  is  impossible  to  consider  this  vital  problem  of 
Race  Culture  in  its  relation  to  National  Health  with- 
out recognising  that  a  movement  of  world-wide  im- 
portance has  set  in  in  nearly  all  civilised  and  pro- 
gressive communities,  in  the  direction  of  a  voluntary 
reduction  of  the  human  birth-rate.  This  movement 
is  unconnected  with  questions  of  food-supply,  stand- 
ards of  life,  or  human  fertility.  It  has  originated  in 
the  Upper  and  Middle  Social  Classes  among  the  more 
educated  portion  of  the  population  as  the  outcome  of 
recently  acquired  knowledge  concerning  the  trans- 
mission of  human  life  from  parents  to  offspring  and 
the  application  of  this  knowledge  to  a  definite  end, 
the  voluntary  control  of  the  family.  From  our 
present  point  of  view  it  is  of  especial  interest  because 
it  affords  another  instance  of  the  gradual  emergence 

153 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

of  modern  society  from  the  control  of  crude  natural 
selection.  It  is  another  example  of  the  extension 
of  the  method  of  environmental  control  by  Social 
man  into  regions  of  human  life  formerly  almost 
entirely  free  from  such  interference,  and,  like  all 
other  movements  which  interfere  with  the  free  play 
of  natural  selection  and  which  aim  at  rendering 
the  conditions  of  life  less  exacting,  it  is  fraught 
with  great  possibilities  for  both  good  and  harm. 

Like  other  examples  of  the  exercise  of  environ- 
mental control  by  Social  man,  this  movement  must 
also  be  judged  by  the  motives  which  inspire  the 
conduct  in  each  individual  case.  If  these  be  un- 
worthy, if  the  thing  aimed  at  be  selfish  indulgence, 
if  the  satisfaction  of  individual  desires  be  set  be- 
fore social  welfare,  then  it  is  a  crime  against  society. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  end  aimed  at  be  better 
chances  of  Life  for  offspring,  if  due  regard  be  paid  to 
the  relative  claims  of  individual  and  social  welfare, 
then  neither  the  verdict  of  public  opinion  nor 
ecclesiastical  disapproval  can  convert  the  exercise  of 
foresight  and  control,  when  prompted  by  worthy 
motives,  into  an  immoral  act. 

But,  however  we  may  judge  of  this  movement,  it 
will  eventually  be  judged  by  its  fruits,  by  the  effect 
it  has  on  those  communities  which  practise  it. 

Whether  it  be  destined  to  bring  about  the  self- 
destruction  or  the  self-renovation  of  Human  Society 
will  depend  on  the  type  of  citizen  it  tends  to  perpet- 
uate— that  is  to  say,  whether  it  encourages  capacity 

154 


HEALTH  AND  HEALING  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

in  the  individual  to  appreciate  right  aims  and  to 
exercise  self-control  in  right  directions — much  also 
depends  on  whether  Public  opinion  appreciates  in 
time  the  magnitude  of  the  movement  and  directs  it 
along  right,  that  is,  along  Eugenic  lines.  For,  though 
at  present  it  is  chiefly  limited  to  the  Middle  and 
Upper  classes  of  Society,  it  is  gradually  reaching  the 
Lower  strata  and  will  eventually  permeate  the 
whole.  And  herein  lies  a  possibility  for  good.  The 
movement  may  provide  a  way  of  escape  from  some 
of  the  greatest  of  the  burdens  which  oppress  Hu- 
manity. The  warlike  nations  are  those  in  whom  an 
expanding  population  is  shut  up  within  circum- 
scribed boundaries,  and  increase  of  population  has  a 
greater  influence  than  peace  tribunals  on  the  Peace 
of  the  world.  Other  vital  sociological  problems,  such 
as  the  restriction  of  competition,  the  possibility  of 
earlier  marriage,  and  the  attainment  of  a  higher 
standard  of  Life  by  the  working  classes,  and  the 
reduction  of  Prostitution  are  all  also  intimately 
related  to  this  question  of  the  voluntary  control  of 
the  birth-rate.  This  at  any  rate  is  certain,  that  the 
voice  of  Public  opinion  and  the  voice  of  Social  custom, 
if  they  are  fundamentally  opposed  to  true  Social 
welfare,  will  eventually  fall  on  deaf  ears. 

Some  students  of  Sociology  have  sought  in  this 
voluntary  reduction  of  the  Human  birth-rate  an 
explanation  of  the  decay  of  past  civilisations.  It  is 
true  that  Empires  and  civilisations,  like  individuals, 
die  from  above  downwards.     But  the  real  cause  of 

155 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

the  decay  of  nations,  as  of  families,  is  growth  of 
environmental  control — that  is,  opportunity  for 
satisfying  desires — out  of  proportion  to  natural 
capacity  to  use  these  opportunities  to  worthy  and 
public  ends.  Material  civilisation  outstrips  ethical 
civilisation.  The  fatal  facilities  afforded  by  luxury 
lead  to  a  damping  down  of  effort  in  worthy  directions, 
and  unless  innate  capacity  rises  above  its  sur- 
roundings this  leads  eventually  to  stagnation  and 
decay. 

In  so  far,  then,  as  this  exercise  of  voluntary  control 
over  the  increase  of  the  population  is  exerted  for 
selfish  ends,  it  does  constitute  a  grave  danger  to 
Society ;  if,  on  the  other  hand,  its  aim  be  the  removal 
of  some  of  the  worst  results  of  unrestricted  compe- 
tition and  faulty  life  conditions,  it  may,  if  properly 
directed,  prove  a  powerful  means  of  progress. 

The  danger  lies  not  in  the  increased  power  of 
environmental  control  nor  in  its  employment  in 
the  field  of  race  culture,  but  in  not  using  the  increased 
power  to  right  ends;  and  the  remedy  is  to  be  sought, 
not  in  a  return  to  Natural  Selection,  but  in  a  further 
extension  of  the  newer  method  of  artificial  selection, 
under  proper  control. 

The  only  efficient  way  of  dealing  with  this  impor- 
tant problem  of  the  voluntary  control  of  the  human 
birth-rate  is  to  bring  about  such  social  and  in- 
dustrial conditions  as  will  render  the  fulfilment  of 
the  duty  of  race  production  and  of  rearing  healthy 
offspring   economically  possible,  on  the  one  hand, 

is6 


HEALTH  AND  HEALING  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

and  to  develop  by  Eugenic  methods,  and  to  foster 
the  exercise  of  an  innate  love  of  parenthood  and  a 
sense  of  parental  responsibility  in  the  citizens,  on 
the  other.  We  must,  in  fact,  deal  with  this  as  with 
all  Social  problems,  by  attacking  it  on  its  individual 
as  well  as  on  its  environmental  aspect.  If  the  social 
and  economic  conditions  of  modern  life  are  such  that 
a  high  standard  of  parental  responsibility  cannot  be 
exercised,  the  mere  substitution  of  easier  circum- 
stances will  not  evolve  a  love  for  parenthood  in 
citizens  in  whom  it  is  by  Nature  absent. 

This  in  effect  means  that  the  whole  attitude  of 
society  to  these  vital  problems  of  sex  and  parent- 
hood needs  revision  in  the  daylight  of  modern 
knowledge  and  testing  by  modem  conceptions  of 
public  and  private  duty.  At  the  same  time  we 
must  not  forget  that  in  thus  speaking  as  though 
we  ourselves  were  in  this  way  or  that  solving  social 
problems,  what  we  really  mean  is  that  in  this  way 
or  that  these  problems  are  in  the  course  of  social 
evolution  solving  themselves. 

We  may  now  summarise  our  conceptions  of  In- 
dividual and  Communal  health  by  regarding  it  as 
harmonious  adjustment  on  the  part  of  the  individual 
citizen  and  the  State  to  both  the  good  and  the  bad 
agencies  in  the  environment,  and  not  merely  as 
the  absence  of  insanitary  surroundings  and  of 
disease  organisms.  But  Public  and  Private  Health 
so  regarded  is  under  present  social  conditions  un- 
attainable except  by  a  few  of  the  more  richly  en- 

11  157 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

dowed  or  happily  circumstanced  members  of  the  com- 
munity. Like  the  slaves  of  ancient  Athens,  a  large 
part  of  Society  is  still  disinherited  as  regards  the 
legacies  of  Health.  Under  present  industrial  and 
social  conditions  healthy  activities  may  be  over- 
exercised,  and  healthy  desires  may  go  unsatisfied. 
Capacity  for  labour,  over-exercised  to  the  point 
or  exhaustion  or  exercised  in  monotonous  toil,  with- 
out the  relief  which  comes  from  change  of  occupa- 
tion, or  the  stimulus  of  delight  in  the  object  toiled 
for,  Capacity  for  feeling,  and  action  unexercised  or 
exercised  under  wrong  conditions — these  things  are 
responsible  for  much  of  the  disharmony  of  our 
artificial  city  life ;  these  things  are  incompatible  with 
perfect  health. 

There  are  only  two  ways  of  righting  disharmony 
in  every  department  of  Life.  Either  the  environ- 
mental conditions  must  be  improved  to  allow  of 
the  exercise  of  the  larger  faculties,  or  the  capaci- 
ties must  be  reduced  to  the  level  of  the  narrower 
environment. 

It  will  not  be  enough  even  in  the  coming  time 
that  there  will  be  no  waste  of  infant  life,  the  result 
of  lack  of  knowledge  or  lack  of  care,  or  that,  by 
the  control  of  accidental,  and  the  removal  of  pre- 
ventable causes  of  disease,  the  life  of  the  adult 
citizen  will  be  prolonged  to  the  full  span  of  human 
vital  capacity.  The  citizens  of  the  Great  State  will 
ask  for  more  than  this.  They  will  claim  to  be  de- 
livered from  the  strain  on  body   and   soul  which 

158 


HEALTH  AND  HEALING  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

comes  from  disharmony  between  capacity  and  the 
conditions  under  which  capacity  is  exercised,  as 
well  as  from  the  drain  on  vital  energy  which  now 
results  from  suffering  and  disease.  After  the  satis- 
faction of  the  immediate  needs  of  existence  they  will 
look  for  a  reserve  of  energy  which  may  be  spent  in 
enlarging  the  horizon  of  life,  and  in  this  clearer 
atmosphere  they  will  taste  once  more  the  Joy  of 
Living.  It  is  in  this  way  that  the  problem  of 
Health  in  the  widest  sense  is  linked  up  with  the 
problem  of  Education,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the 
possibilities  of  social,  economic,  and  industrial  re- 
form, on  the  other. 

Among  Health-promoting  factors  two  of  the  most 
important,  at  any  rate  under  the  depressing  condi- 
tions of  our  modern  industrial  life,  are  "Healthy 
Recreation"  and  "Change  of  Occupation."  Other 
writers  will  deal  with  these  aspects  of  life  under 
the  better  conditions  of  the  Great  State,  but  when 
that  freer  interchange  which  we  all  hope  for  has 
been  brought  about  between  the  Hfc  of  the  country 
and  the  life  of  the  city,  when  the  fresh  air  and  the 
freedom  and  the  rest  of  the  country  can  be  obtained 
by  the  town  dweller,  and  the  means  of  easy  com- 
munication and  opportunities  for  social  intercourse 
reach  to  the  country,  then  some  of  the  lifelessness 
that  results  from  exhaustion  and  monotony  will  be 
done  away  with. 

We  now  realise  that  the  biological  foundations 
are  the  only  firm  foundations  on  which  we  can  build 

159 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

up  Health  or  resist  Disease,  and  in  the  coming  time 
we  shall  also  learn  that  Innate  Capacity,  the  con- 
ditions under  which  it  is  exercised,  and  the  acquire- 
ments that  it  makes,  must  also  provide  the  funda- 
mental principles  by  which  the  education  of  the 
child,  the  life  and  labour  of  the  adult  citizen,  and  the 
duties  of  the  State  must  be  guided  and  controlled. 


II 

HEALING 

We  have  now  formed  some  conception  of  what 
Communal  and  Individual  Health  in  its  widest  and 
best  sense  will  mean  under  the  improved  social  con- 
ditions of  the  Great  State,  and  we  must  pass  on  to 
consider  some  of  the  ways  in  which  this  fuller  Life 
may  be  realised. 

In  the  first  place,  a  true  sense  of  the  relative 
importance  of  the  objects  to  be  aimed  at  is  very 
necessary  if  we  are  to  avoid  the  error  of  confusing 
mediate  with  ultimate  ends.  For  while  the  final 
aim  must  be  the  Health,  the  fuller  life  of  the  com- 
munity as  a  whole,  the  efficiency  and  the  welfare  of 
the  profession  of  Healing  are  of  fundamental  impor- 
tance as  a  necessary  step  towards  the  realisation  of 
the  goal. 

One  thing,  at  any  rate,  is  clear:  if  Health  means 
Harmonious  Adjustment  to  environmental  condi- 
tions, then  every  one  whose  business  it  is  to  bring 

i6o 


HEALTH  AND  HEALING  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

about  health  must  be  an  adapter  and  a  harmoniser. 
The  Profession  of  Healing  must  concern  itself  with 
all  efforts  which  tend  to  bring  about  harmonious 
adjustment  between  the  citizens  and  their  environ- 
ment. It  must  be  occupied,  not  only  with  the  re- 
moval of  insanitary  surroundings  and  the  promotion 
of  individual  resistance  to  infection,  but  it  must  also 
strive  to  develop  a  normal  mental  and  bodily  re- 
sponse on  the  part  of  the  citizens  to  all  kinds  of 
healthy  stimuli. 

Before  we  can  indicate  the  lines  along  which 
future  progress  in  this  direction  may  be  looked  for 
we  must  first  pass  in  brief  review  one  or  two  aspects 
of  the  relationship  which  at  present  exists  between 
the  Medical  Profession  and  the  Public.  To  begin 
with,  the  service  of  Health  is  vital  to  Society.  It 
is  indeed  so  vital  that  it  has  become  one  of  the 
fundamental  concerns  of  the  State  that  medical  and 
surgical  treatment  should  be  available  for  all,  that 
the  healthy  life  and  the  means  of  attaining  it,  as 
far  as  such  means  are  attainable,  should  be  within 
the  reach  of  every  member  of  the  community,  poor 
as  well  as  rich. 

How  do  we  stand  to-day  in  regard  to  this  matter? 
The  treatment  of  disease  is  now  carried  on  in  two 
ways:  by  the  Institutional  method  and  the  Home- 
treatment  method.  Of  these  two  the  Institutional 
is  by  far  the  most  efficient  and  the  most  valuable 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  cure  of  disease;  but 
under  present  conditions  it  is  quite  inadequate  to 

i6i 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

meet  the  needs  of  the  great  mass  of  the  working- 
class  population,  at  any  rate  in  this  country  in  which 
the  General  Hospitals  are  supported  by  voluntary 
contributions,  and  are  not  subsidised  by  the  Mu- 
nicipalities or  the  State.  It  is  calculated  that 
Hospital  accommodation  is  only  available  for  from 
twenty  to  fifty  per  cent,  of  the  population  it  ought 
to  benefit.  It  touches,  in  fact,  only  a  portion  of  the 
mass  of  disease  amongst  the  poor. 

When  we  turn  to  the  treatment  of  disease  in 
working-class  homes,  we  find  a  still  more  unsatisfac- 
tory condition  of  things.  A  great  part  of  the  con- 
tract medical  and  surgical  practice  of  Great  Britain 
— at  any  rate  that  part  of  it  which  is  concerned  with 
the  Home  visiting  and  the  treatment  of  working 
people  in  private  surgeries,  hospital  out-patient  de- 
partments, and  out-patient  clinics  under  the  Club 
system — is  suffering  from  certain  serious  inherent 
defects  which  tend  to  bring  about  inefficiency  of 
treatment  and  a  false  mental  attitude  on  the  part 
of  the  patients  and  the  medical  attendant  towards 
the  whole  problem  of  disease.  In  the  first  place, 
owing  to  unrestricted  competition  among  medical 
men  themselves,  this  contract  practice  is  inad- 
equately remunerated.  This  means  that  a  great 
number  of  sufferers  from  real  or  imaginary  diseases 
must  pass  through  the  medical  attendant's  hands 
if  he  is  to  make  a  living,  and  this  means  hurried 
observation,  imperfect  diagnosis,  and  inadequate 
treatment  in  many  cases.     Further,  it  brings  about 

162 


HEALTH  AND  HEALING  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

a  tendency  to  make  up  for  lack  of  thoroughness  in 
investigation  by  a  routine  system  of  drug -pre- 
scribing, with  the  result  that  a  false  sense  of  satis- 
faction is  thereby  engendered  in  the  minds  of 
patients  who  are  often  ignorant  of  the  real  relation- 
ship between  the  administration  of  drugs  and  the 
curing  and  prevention  of  disease.  An  extravagant 
belief  in  the  necessity  for  drugs  in  the  treatment  of 
disease  has  sprung  up  in  the  mind  of  the  Public,  and 
an  easy  acquiescence  in  this  line  of  least  resistance 
in  the  minds  of  some  medical  men  which  is  de- 
moralising to  the  Profession. 

It  thus  happens,  through  the  fault  of  a  system 
rather  than  through  the  fault  of  the  individual,  that 
the  true  function  of  the  "Healer"  is  obscured  and 
misunderstood,  and  in  many  cases  a  futile  attempt 
to  treat  symptoms  or  to  remove  results  has  over- 
shadowed the  more  lengthy  and  more  difficult  but 
more  efficient  method  of  dealing  with  the  causes  of 
disease.  The  real  remedy  for  this  unsatisfactory 
state  of  things  is  a  deeper  appreciation  of  the  true 
meaning  of  "Health,"  on  the  one  hand,  and  a  clearer 
recognition  of  the  real  function  of  the  "Healer,"  on 
the  other.  If  some  of  the  energy  which  is  now  being 
expended  by  medical  men  in  the  routine  visiting  of 
long  lists  of  contract  and  club  patients,  and  in  the 
prescribing  and  dispensing  of  drugs  for  the  relief 
of  symptoms,  could  be  directed  to  the  prevention 
of  the  beginnings  of  disease  in  people's  homes,  and  to 
the  provision  of  efficient  institutional  treatment  for 

163 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

those  persons  whose  recovery  would  be  materially 
aided  by  removal  to  better  surroundings,  then  not 
only  would  the  health  of  the  people  be  more  effi- 
ciently safeguarded,  but  the  lot  of  the  doctor  would 
be  a  more  useful,  a  more  self-respecting,  and  therefore 
a  more  happy  one.  But  this  means  two  things:  it 
means  a  great  extension  of  the  Institutional  system, 
and  it  means  a  reorganisation  of  the  system  of 
Contract  and  Club  Practice,  through  which  the  poor 
now  obtain  medical  assistance. 

With  regard  to  the  first  it  is  hopeless  to  look  for 
any  great  extension  of  hospital  accommodation  on 
the  lines  of  voluntary  support.  Hospital  adminis- 
tration has  in  this  country  now  passed  through  the 
experimental  and  initiatory  stage,  during  which  it 
is  wiser  to  leave  it  to  the  stimulus  of  individual 
effort  and  voluntary  support.  It  has  become  an 
absolute  necessity  of  our  social  and  industrial  life. 
General  Hospital  administration  now  requires  the 
integrating  influence  of  State  control  to  bring  it 
into  co-ordination  with  Poor  Law  Infirmaries,  In- 
fectious Hospitals,  and  with  other  voluntary  and 
municipal  health  agencies.  Moreover,  there  are 
many  indications  that  it  is  in  this  direction  that 
the  problem  of  Hospital  administration  will  eventu- 
ally be  solved. 

Things  are  also  moving  in  the  same  direction  in 
the  domiciliary  side  of  medical  practice.  Owing  to 
unrestricted  competition  among  its  own  members, 
the  profession  of  Medicine  is  suffering  from  lack  of 

164 


HEALTH  AND  HEALING  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

co-ordination  of  effort,  waste  of  energy,  and  want  of 
control ;  and  owing  to  the  same  cause  it  is  also  suffer- 
ing from  inadequate  remuneration  and,  as  a  further 
consequence,  from  a  lack  of  appreciation  on  the  part 
of  the  Public  of  the  real  value  of  its  services  and  the 
true  position  it  ought  to  occupy  in  the  State. 

The  uncertainty  and  the  obscurity  which  hung 
around  the  methods  of  the  "Healer"  in  the  past 
still  tend  to  obstruct  his  vision  and  prejudice  his 
authority,  now  that  he  is  called  upon  to  play  the 
part  of  health  adviser  to  the  community.  Society 
forgets  that  the  Profession  of  Healing  has  long  ago 
discarded  the  old  garments  of  magic  and  superstition, 
which  clothed  it  in  infancy,  and  that  it  has  almost 
succeeded  in  shaking  off  the  fetters  of  tradition  and 
dogma  which  still  encumber  its  old  companions 
Theology  and  Law,  and  that  it  is  both  ready  and 
willing  to  enter  on  the  duties  of  mature  age  and 
wider  experience.  On  the  other  hand,  the  com- 
munity is  also  suffering  from  the  imperfections  of 
the  present  system,  but  in  a  different  way.  It 
suffers  from  the  inefficiency  of  service  which  comes 
from  uncontrolled  contract  practice,  and  from  the 
demoralisation  which  follows  a  too  ready  acquies- 
cence in  a  symptomatic  as  opposed  to  a  preventive 
and  radical  treatment  of  disease.  The  eventual 
remedy  for  both  difficulties  can  only  be  a  National 
Health  Service  in  which  the  conditions  of  service 
include  adequate  remuneration  and  a  reserve  of 
time,  money,  opportunity,  and  legislative  freedom 

165 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

for  progressive  development,  for  the  acquirement  of 
new  knowledge,  and  for  the  application  of  new  and 
improved  methods  in  the  treatment  of  disease. 

The  Science  and  Art  of  Healing  and  those  who 
practise  it  must  be  protected  against  unnecessary 
interference  by  officialdom,  against  hampering  and 
restrictive  legislation  prompted  by  a  sentimental  or 
ill-informed  public  opinion;  and  this  must  be  se- 
cured by  an  efficient  representation  of  medical 
opinion  and  medical  interests  on  Municipal  and 
State  councils. 

In  the  same  way  the  interests  of  the  community 
must  also  be  safeguarded  against  undue  regimenta- 
tion in  matters  of  health.  False  assumption  of  au- 
thority in  administrative  matters  on  the  part  of 
the  Profession  must  be  prevented  by  Free  Trade  in 
the  National  Health  Service,  by  free  choice  of  doctor 
on  the  part  of  the  individual  citizen  or  social  groups, 
and  by  freedom  on  the  part  of  the  public  to  decline 
any  special  or  improved  form  of  treatment,  subject 
always  to  the  important  condition  that  such  refusal 
does  not  endanger  public  safety  or  run  counter  to 
the  interests  of  the  community. 

Now,  this  scheme  of  a  national  health  service 
must  be  conceived  on  a  well-thought-out  plan.  It 
must  embrace  the  Health  interests  of  the  individual 
citizen,  on  the  one  hand,  and  social,  municipal,  and 
State  interests,  on  the  other.  Here,  as  in  all  matters 
of  State  enterprise  and  Municipal  trading,  there  are 
certain  things  which  are  best  left  to  individual  effort 

i66 


HEALTH  AND  HEALING  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

and  voluntary  support,  and  there  are  others  which 
are  better  done  by  social  co-operation.  To  the 
former  must  be  relegated  the  medical  attendance, 
institutional  and  domiciliary,  of  all  those  more 
fortunately  circumstanced  citizens  who  desire  and 
are  in  a  position  to  pay  for  medical  services  other 
than,  or  over  and  above  those  provided  by  the 
State.  For  the  remainder  of  the  population  which 
embraces  the  very  poor  and  the  small  salary-earning 
and  small  wage-earning  class  a  National  Health  Ser- 
vice should  in  this  country  develop  along  the  follow- 
ing lines: 

Co-ordination  must  be  brought  about  among  exist- 
ing institutions  for  the  treatment  of  disease.  The 
voluntary  General  Hospitals,  Convalescent  Homes, 
and  Sanatoria  must  be  linked  up  with  the  rate  and 
State  -  supported  institutions,  the  Municipal  In- 
fectious Hospitals,  the  Municipal  and  County  Asy- 
lums, the  Municipal  Sanatoria,  the  School  Clinics, 
the  Poor  Law  Infirmaries,  and  the  Prisons  Medical 
Service.  The  present  honorary  Staffs  of  the  General 
Hospitals  would  be  paid  salaries,  they  would  be 
brought  into  relationship  with  medical  officers  of 
health,  with  the  Staffs  of  Infectious  Hospitals,  of 
Asylums,  of  Sanatoria,  and  of  School  Clinics,  with 
Poor  Law  Officers  working  in  Poor  Law  Infirmaries, 
and  with  Prison  doctors.  The  whole  of  this  great 
institutional  system,  with  its  vast  material  and  wide 
opportunities  for  the  study  of  disease,  would  be- 
come available  for  the  purposes  of  medical  educa- 

167 


SOCIALISM  AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

tion,  not  only  so,  but  a  far  larger  number  of  already 
qualified  and  practising  medical  men  would  be  thus 
enabled  to  keep  in  touch  with  new  knowledge  and 
new  methods,  for  it  is  especially  true  in  a  growing 
science  like  medicine  that  for  any  seeker  after 
knowledge  to  be  satisfied  with  past  experience  or 
to  attempt  to  live  on  the  record  of  past  attainments 
is  woefully  to  restrict  usefulness,  even  if  it  does  not 
hinder  success.  And  with  this  Institutional  part 
of  the  National  Health  Service  must  be  linked  up  a 
corresponding  Nursing  Service. 

The  other  or  the  domiciliary  side  of  the  Health 
Service,  the  visiting  of  the  citizens  in  their  own 
homes,  would  be  carried  out  by  District  and  Divi- 
sional Medical  Officers.  They  would  treat  such 
cases  as  could  be  well  treated  at  home,  and  such  as 
were  too  ill  for  removal,  or  not  sufficiently  ill  to  re- 
quire institutional  treatment,  and  they  would  be 
assisted  in  their  work  by  an  organised  District 
Nursing  Service. 

One  very  important  part  of  the  duty  of  these 
Medical  Officers  would  be  the  periodic  visiting  of 
all  households  and  the  reporting  on  the  health 
and  life  conditions  of  the  householder  and  his  de- 
pendants. This  need  be  neither  inquisitorial  nor 
offensive,  if  there  is  a  proper  system  of  local  controls 
over  the  appointments  of  the  medical  men  concerned. 
There  need  be  no  more  inconvenience  in  the  visit 
of  the  Medical  Officer  than  in  the  visit  of  any  other 
Municipal  official.     In  this  way  the  early  beginnings 

i68 


HEALTH  AND  HEALING  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

of  disease  would  be  often  detected  and  the  preven- 
tion of  disease  would  become  a  reality,  for  the  health 
authorities  would  be  provided  with  accurate  statistics 
and  reliable  information  about  disease.  In  this  way, 
too,  the  work  of  the  Medical  Practitioner  would  be 
raised  in  dignity  and  in  tone.  He  would  be  one 
among  many  officers  occupied  in  a  great  national 
inquiry  into  the  causes  of,  as  well  as  the  best  way 
of  treating  disease;  he  would  feel  that  he  was  being 
paid  for  work  of  value  to  the  community,  as  well  as 
to  the  individual. 

What  are  the  objections  which  can  be  brought 
forward  against  such  a  scheme? 

Doubtless  those  who  dread  the  introduction  of 
so-called  socialistic  methods  into  any  new  depart- 
ments of  human  life  will  again  raise  the  objection 
which  was  formerly  raised  against  the  introduction 
of  State  Education.  So-called  free  doctoring  is  to 
such  persons  on  a  level  with  so-called  free  education : 
both  are  equally  vicious.  But,  in  both  cases,  such 
objectors  overlook  the  fact  that  in  reality  neither 
the  benefits  of  a  National  Health  Service  nor  the 
benefits  of  a  State-provided  Education  are  really 
free;  as  a  matter  of  fact,  that  service  cannot  be  truly 
described  as  free  in  which  both  the  expenditure  and 
the  effort  which  are  necessary  to  provide  it  are  shared 
by  all  directly  or  indirectly.  It  is  only  free  in  the 
sense  that  it  is  available  for  all,  just  as  it  is  provided 
by  all. 

Indeed,   a  question  of  even  greater  importance 

169 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

to-day  is  not  so  much  that  of  the  free  provision  of 
medical  attendance  as  of  the  desirabihty  of  the 
compulsory  adoption  of  the  means  of  attaining 
health  by  all  citizens.  If,  like  the  attainment  of 
knowledge,  the  attainment  of  Health  is  so  vital  to 
national  welfare  that  the  State  makes  it  compul- 
sory, then,  like  the  service  of  knowledge,  the  service 
of  Health  must  be  free,  too.  If  the  State  has  learned 
to  recognise  that  the  uneducated  citizen  is  a  source 
of  national  inefficiency,  surely  the  State  must  also 
realise  that  the  unhealthy  and  the  diseased  citizen 
is  a  source  of  national  danger.  We  are  only  begin- 
ning to  realise  that  it  is  just  as  wrong  to  be  ill,  if 
the  illness  be  preventable,  as  it  is  wrong  to  be  igno- 
rant if  the  ignorance  can  be  dispelled.  It  is  not 
enough  that  a  small  proportion  of  the  members 
of  any  community  should  be  robustly  healthy  or 
highly  trained;  the  whole  body  of  citizens  ijiust  be 
raised  up  to  a  certain  minimum  level  of  mental  and 
bodily  efficiency:  above  this  average  minimum  of 
Health  and  Sanity  there  will  always  remain  plenty 
of  room  for  further  development.  Moreover,  and 
most  important  of  all,  the  provision  by  the  State  of 
the  means  of  attaining  Health,  if  it  be  also  accom- 
panied by  care  in  seeing  that  these  means  are  adopted, 
is,  like  State  education,  free  from  the  disadvantage 
of  producing  concomitant  demoralisation  and  relax- 
ation of  individual  effort ;  for  both  the  attainment  of 
Health  and  the  attainment  of  Knowledge  recognise 
the  biological  law  of  Response,  they  both  presuppose 

170 


HEALTH  AND  HEALING  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

some  effort  on  the  part  of  the  citizen  benefited,  while 
the  increased  efficiency  of  body  and  of  mind  which 
result  lead  in  their  turn  to  increased  capacity  for 
further  effort. 

It  is  those  well-meant  but  misguided  social  efforts 
to  ameliorate  the  conditions  of  life  among  the  poor 
and  the  sick  which  do  not  include  the  recognition 
of  the  fundamental  necessity  for  some  responsive 
effort  on  the  part  of  the  persons  benefited,  that 
cause  demoralisation  of  character.  The  provision  of 
healthier  surroundings  and  opportunities  for  the  ex- 
ercise of  higher  capacities  does  not  fall  within  this 
category.  Let  no  one  suppose  that  the  provision 
of  a  healthier  and  better  environment  will  bring 
about  a  less  worthy  type  of  citizen. 

But  there  will  also  be  objections  on  the  part  of 
Medical  Men.  One  of  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of 
reconciling  the  Medical  Profession  to  the  idea  of  a 
National  Health  Service  is  the  suspicion  and  dis- 
like with  which  individual  medical  men  regard  all 
forms  of  contract  service  and  payment  per  capita, 
or  by  salary  for  whole  or  part  time  service.  This 
suspicion  and  dislike  arises  largely  from  past  ex- 
perience of  this  kind  of  service  at  the  hands  of  the 
Friendly  Societies  and  Clubs  under  the  old  regime 
of  unrestricted  competition.  When  we  inquire  into 
the  evolution  of  these  different  methods  of  remunera- 
tion we  find  that  payment  by  individual  patients  for 
individual  services  rendered  is  as  a  rule  found  in  less 
progressive  communities  than  payment  per  capita 

171 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

or  by  salary  for  whole-time  service.  In  industrial 
life,  piece-work  and  time-work  correspond  more  or 
less  accurately  to  payment  for  services  rendered  and 
payment  by  salary  in  professional  life.  Now,  it  is 
a  significant  fact  that  while  in  different  trades  some 
trade-unions  recognise  piece-work  and  some  time- 
work,  yet  no  trade-unions  recognise  piece-work  un- 
less it  is  compatible  with  collective  bargaining.  In 
fact,  both  employers  and  employed  adopt  either 
method  according  as  it  leads  to  advantageous  bar- 
gaining. Of  the  two  methods  of  remuneration  for 
professional  services,  payment  for  whole-time  ser- 
vice is  far  more  consistent  with  collective  bargain- 
ing than  payment  by  individual  patients  for  services 
rendered,  while  payment  per  capita  stands  in  an 
intermediate  position  as  a  form  of  bargain,  between 
the  State  Agreement,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  Agree- 
ment between  the  doctor  and  his  individual  patients, 
on  the  other.  In  fact,  State  or  Municipal  salary  for 
whole-time  service  (and  payment  per  capita  by 
Friendly  Societies  in  a  less  degree)  tends  to  approxi- 
mate the  old  basis  of  agreement  between  doctor  and 
patient  to  the  modern  basis  of  agreement  which 
obtains  between  employer  and  employed  in  indus- 
trial life.  It  substitutes  the  newer  relationship  of 
one  employer  (the  State)  to  many  employed,  for 
the  older  relationship  of  many  employers  to  one  em- 
ployed, as  in  the  agreement  between  the  private 
doctor  and  his  individual  patients,  and  by  so  doing 
if  favours  the  possibility  of  collective  bargaining  on 

172 


HEALTH  AND  HEALING  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

the  part  of  the  employed;  and  on  this  ground  it 
ought  to  receive  favourable  consideration  by  the 
Profession,  or  at  any  rate  that  portion  of  the  Pro- 
fession which  realises  that  its  relationships  with  the 
public  in  the  future  will  be  more  and  more  regulated, 
as  far  as  remuneration  for  services  is  concerned,  by 
trade-union  methods  of  the  better  kind. 

For  we  know  that  the  average  employer  constant- 
ly seeks  to  get  more  work  for  the  same  payment, 
while  the  average  employee  desires  to  get  more  pay 
for  the  same  amount  of  work;  and  both  alike  favour 
time  or  piece  work  according  as  either  method 
seems  best  calculated  to  bring  about  this  result. 
Hence  it  comes  about  that  it  is  impossible  to  pre- 
vent the  degradation  of  the  standard  of  Professional 
Life  under  unrestricted  competition,  just  as  it  is 
impossible  to  prevent  it  in  competitive  industrial  oc- 
cupations, unless  the  terms  and  conditions  of  service 
allow  of  some  form  of  collective  bargaining  between 
the  individuals  or  the  groups  concerned.  Hence  the 
importance  of  securing  some  method  of  remuneration 
which  allows  of  collective  bargaining. 

Owing  to  a  deficient  social  conscience  in  many 
citizens,  both  employers  and  employed,  and  in  spite 
of  education  and  moral  training,  conduct  continues 
to  be  directed  by  considerations  of  supposed  self- 
interest  rather  than  by  considerations  of  social 
welfare.  It  is  possible  that  in  a  regenerated  State, 
public-spirited  conduct,  inspired  by  worthy  motives, 
will  allow  of  a  return  to  the  old  individual  relation- 

12  173 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

ships  in  matters  of  remuneration  for  service  ren- 
dered, and  that  a  fair  reward  for  whole-hearted  ser- 
vice will  not  need  to  be  secured  by  any  form  of  col- 
lective bargaining;  but  that  brighter  day  has  not 
yet  dawned,  and  we  are  now  concerned  with  the 
means  by  which  the  end  may  be  attained  rather  than 
with  the  end  itself. 

The  ultimate  test  of  the  fitness  of  any  institution 
or  industrial  enterprise  or  profession  for  munici- 
palisation  or  nationalisation  must  be  Utility.  It 
must  be  the  relative  value  to  Society  of  such  in- 
stitutional enterprise  or  professional  service  under 
municipal  or  State  as  against  individual  control,  and 
this  will  to  a  certain  extent  depend  on  the  degree 
of  integration  and  co-ordination,  that  is  on  the 
state  of  development  of  the  enterprise  or  service 
in  question,  and  on  the  nature  of  the  service  which 
it  can  render  to  Society.  Some  enterprises  are  more 
organised  than  others,  some  services  are  more  vital 
than  others  to  the  welfare  of  Society.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  those  branches  of  the  medical  profession 
which  are  concerned  with  Municipal  and  institutional 
administration,  with  preventive  medicine  and  public 
health,  have  already  reached  a  certain  level  of  or- 
ganisation. It  is  the  private  practice  and  the 
domiciliary  side  of  professional  service  that  need 
bringing  up  to  the  same  level. 

The  enormous  importance  of  the  problem  makes  it 
a  matter  of  vital  concern  that  the  ingoing  informa- 
tion and  the  outgoing  energy  of  a  National  Health 

174 


HEALTH  AND  HEALING  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

Service  should  be  co-ordinated  in  one  central  brain 
in  one  department  under  the  control  of  a  Minister 
of  Health,  and  this  Minister  must  combine  in  him- 
self, or  be  able  to  obtain  at  first-hand,  medical 
knowledge  and  a  knowledge  of  biological  Sociol- 
ogy; the  Health  Department  will  be  the  most 
fundamental  of  all  the  departments  of  State.  It 
will  be  called  upon  to  advise  other  departments 
concerning  the  biological  principles  upon  which 
education  and  labour  must  be  founded,  upon  which 
the  activities  of  the  soldier,  sailor,  and  other  public 
servants  must  be  guided;  and  upon  which  the  con- 
trol and  reformation  of  the  mentally  deficient,  the 
pauper,  and  the  criminal  must  be  carried  out. 

Having  attempted  to  answer  various  objections 
that  may  be  raised  against  it,  having  discussed  the 
question  of  a  National  Health  Service  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  State,  we  must  now  consider 
the  effect  of  nationalisation  on  the  Medical  Pro- 
fession itself.  As  soon  as  we  rise  above  the  level 
of  the  primitive  society,  with  its  impelling  desires 
to  satisfy  only  the  primary  needs  of  existence,  we 
come  under  the  control  of  other  motives  and  meet 
with  other  springs  of  conduct.  The  desire  for  the 
approbation  of  fellow-citizens,  the  wish  to  stand 
well  with  society — these  are  the  motives  which  direct 
human  conduct  and  sway  the  actions  of  civilised 
mankind  on  a  large  scale  in  the  pursuit  of  worthy  and 
unworthy  ends.  It  is  this  which  leads  to  the  amass- 
ing of  wealth,  the  acquirement  of  power,  and  it  is 

175 


SOCIALLSM   AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

this  which,  if  conceived  in  a  selfish  spirit  or  moulded 
by  a  debased  standard  of  social  approbation,  brings 
about  the  vicious  circle  in  which  unworthy  conduct 
in  the  influential  citizen  vitiates  public  opinion; 
and  debased  public  opinion  approves  of  the  un- 
un worthy  conduct.  Everything  turns  on  the  aver- 
age level  of  public  spirit  and  the  standard  of  public 
duty  in  every  community.  The  nationalisation 
of  the  Health  Service,  like  that  of  every  other  ser- 
vice, is  undesirable  and  unsafe  until  a  certain  stand- 
ard of  social  and  ethical  development  has  been 
reached  by  the  community.  Indeed,  it  is  only  pos- 
sible where  a  civic  consciousness  is  present  among 
both  those  who  render  the  service  and  those  who 
benefit  by  it. 

We  believe  that  in  Great  Britain,  at  any  rate, 
such  a  stage  of  civic  evolution  has  already  been 
reached. 

But  there  are  other  and  important  reasons  why  the 
relationship  between  the  Profession  of  Healing  and 
the  community  should  be  a  State  relationship  rather 
than  a  relationship  between  individual  citizens.  So 
long  as  medical  treatment  is  concerned  with  the 
protection  of  the  individual  citizen  against  outside 
infection,  against  those  injurious  environmental 
factors  which  prejudice  personal  health,  it  does  not 
run  counter  to  individual  inclinations,  and  so  long 
even  as  medical  advice  concerns  itself  with  the  pres- 
ent it  does  not  evoke  any  great  opposition.  The 
difficulty  arises  when  we  begin  to  act  in  the  interests 

176 


HEALTH  AND  HEALING  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

of  future  generations.  Now  there  are  sources  of 
disease  outside  the  control  of  individual  doctors,  out- 
side the  authority  of  Medical  Officers  of  Health  and 
Sanitary  Authorities.  As  we  have  already  seen  in 
Part  I  of  this  essay  there  are  congenital  deficiencies, 
errors  of  development  which  are  not  the  result  of 
disease  organisms  or  of  insanitary  surroundings.  It 
is  in  regard  to  these  mental  and  bodily  disabilities 
which  arise  from  the  faulty  union  of  deficient  natural 
tendencies  that  the  profession  of  Healing,  when 
dealing  with  the  problem  of  race  culture,  will  be 
increasingly  called  upon  to  decide;  and,  if  it  is  to 
speak  with  authority  in  cases  where  duty  to  the 
next  generation  does  not  always  coincide  with  the 
desires  of  the  individual  citizen,  then  it  becomes 
necessary  that  the  skilled  adviser  shall  be  free  from 
ignorant  opposition  and  supported  by  the  general 
intelligence  of  the  community.  This  can  only  be 
secured  by  placing  the  relationship  between  adviser 
and  citizen  on  the  secure  basis  of  a  State-controlled 
and  State-recognised  service  in  a  State  which  is  the 
expression  of  a  highly  developed  collective  mind. 

It  is  only  from  such  a  standpoint,  too,  that  the 
profession  of  Health  can  speak  with  power  in  matters 
of  immorality  and  intemperance  in  those  regions  of 
social  and  individual  misadjustment  in  which  the 
disharmony  is  the  direct  or  indirect  result  of  a  de- 
parture from  a  temperate  or  moral  mode  of  life. 

Moreover,  the  conspiracy  of  silence  which  now  en- 
velops the  whole  subject  of  sex  responsibilities  and 

177 


SOCIALISM   AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

sex  morality  must  be  cleared  away,  and  it  will  be  the 
duty  of  the  Health  adviser  to  co-operate  with  the 
educationist  in  dispelling  ignorance  about  normal  sex 
functions,  and  in  pointing  out  the  harmful  results  of 
immoral  conduct  in  ruined  health  and  in  diminished 
efficiency.  The  work  of  the  State  doctor  will  be 
preventive  rather  than  curative,  national  as  well  as 
individual,  and  educational  in  a  high  degree.  He  it 
is  who  will  act  as  guide  and  counsellor  in  the  coming 
transition  period  in  the  history  of  the  human  race, 
which  is  now  approaching  much  more  quickly  than 
many  suppose.  For  mankind  is  passing  out  of  the 
control  of  its  old  schoolmaster,  Natural  Selection,  and 
is  entering  on  the  wider  career  of  adult  life,  when  the 
old  evolutionary  landmarks  will  be  lost  sight  of, 
when  preadaptation  and  instinctive  response  will  be 
largely  supplemented  by  capacity  to  profit  by  ex- 
perience, and  when  the  power  of  controlling  his  en- 
vironment will  enable  man  to  take  a  large  share  in 
the  shaping  of  Human  destiny.  Those  who  are 
called  upon  to  advise  the  race  in  these  great  issues 
must  be  public-spirited  citizens  above  all  suspicion 
of  self-seeking.  Such  public  spirit  as  we  need  de- 
mands public  service  and  public  recognition;  it  will 
flourish  in  an  atmosphere  of  penetrating  criticism 
efficiently  performed,  it  will  languish  under  condi- 
tions both  of  unrestricted  competition  and  of  re- 
stricted activity.  It  perishes  in  a  life  of  unlimited 
self-assertion  and  uncontrolled  individualism. 

The  uncertainty  and  the  obscurity  which  have  in 

178 


HEALTH  AND  HEALING  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

the  past  hung  about  the  methods  of  the  Healer  in 
the  treatment  of  disease  in  the  individual  citizen 
still  cling  to  his  reputation  and  prejudice  his  author- 
ity, now  that  he  is  called  upon  to  act  as  the  adjuster 
between  the  social  organism  and  its  environment. 
But  this  will  rapidly  disappear  with  wider  knowl- 
edge and  increasing  experience  on  his  part,  and  with 
a  broad  sustaining  collective  intelligence  and  criti- 
cism behind  and  penetrating  his  specialised  authority. 
Of  this  much  we  may  be  quite  certain,  that  it  is  only 
as  the  Healing  Profession  responds  to  the  call  which 
will  be  made  upon  it  by  Society  for  instruction  and 
guidance  in  the  important  field  of  race  culture,  only 
as  it  concerns  itself  with  the  causes  and  the  preven- 
tion of  disease  in  childhood,  in  prenatal  and  germinal 
life,  only  as  it  rises  to  the  full  measure  of  its  respon- 
sibilities to  the  Race  and  to  future  generations — only 
as  it  does  these  things  can  it  claim  to  save  society 
from  internal  decay,  as  it  now  claims  to  protect  it 
from  those  external  factors  which  produce  disease. 
When  adequately  remunerated  and  thoroughly 
efficient  medical  treatment  and  advice  are  secured 
to  every  citizen,  when  the  unessentials  have  been 
cast  aside  and  the  energy  now  expended  in  the 
treatment  of  symptoms  and  on  attempts  to  neu- 
tralise the  effects  of  disease  is  directed  to  the  detec- 
tion and  the  removal  of  its  cause,  when  Society 
understands  that  amateur  attempts  to  apply  un- 
trained methods  in  dealing  with  disease  are  bound 
to  fail,   when  the  State  recognises  the  wisdom  of 

179 


SOCIALISM   AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

following  the  well-considered  advice,  as  well  as  con- 
sulting the  mature  opinion  of  skilled  advisers  in 
matters  relating  to  the  health  of  this  and  the  next 
generation,  when  the  Profession  of  HeaHng  itself 
recognises  that  it  exists  for  the  purpose  of  bringing 
Society  into  more  harmonious  adaptation  to  its 
environment  and  that  its  only  legitimate  demands 
must  be  for  freedom,  encouragement,  sympathetic 
understanding,  and  opportunity  to  carry  on  its  work 
of  healing  under  such  conditions  of  service  as  will 
lead  to  greater  efficiency  on  the  part  of  its  own 
members,  and  greater  benefits  to  the  community 
which  it  serves,  then,  and  not  till  then,  will  the 
Science  and  practice  of  Medicine  be  worthy  of 
the  Great  State;  and  then,  and  not  till  then,  will 
the  Great  State  fully  recognise  the  usefulness  and  the 
worth  of  its  Health  Service. 


LAW   AND   THE   GREAT   STATE 

BY    E.   S.  P.   HAYNES 


VI 

LAW  AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

Of  Law  no  less  can  be  said  than  that  her  seat  is  the  bosom 
of  God,  her  voice  the  harmony  of  the  world. — Hooker. 

This  eloquent  sentence  is  scarcely  likely  to  find 
an  echo  in  modern  sentiment.  In  our  world  of 
to-day  law  has  associations  of  terror  for  the  poor, 
of  financial  jeopardy  for  the  rich,  of  richly  confused 
legislation  for  the  lawyer.  Law  makes  little  or  no 
appeal  either  to  the  collective  intelligence  or  to  the 
collective  affections  of  the  community.  The  law, 
in  popular  estimation,  is  a  "hass."  In  the  estima- 
tion of  a  growing  minority  it  is  (as  administered  by 
modem  bureaucracy)  simply  a  brutal  bully,  whose 
intervention  must  be  avoided  at  any  cost,  or  an 
overbearing  sharper  extremely  difficult  to  evade. 
There  is  still,  perhaps,  for  many  minds  a  certain 
mystical  glamour  about  it.  The  ordinary  man  who 
might  make  an  inte  lectual  effort  to  understand  the 
workings  of  his  household  cisterns  or  sanitary  ar- 
rangements would  as  often  as  not  flinch  from  in- 
vestigating all  the  possible  complications  of  his  own 
will.  To  some  extent  this  is  inevitable.  In  a  high- 
ly civilised  community  legal  machinery  cannot  be 

183 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

simpler  than  any  other  machinery,  though,  of  course, 
it  should  not  be  more  complicated  than  other  machin- 
ery, if  such  a  state  of  things  can  be  avoided.  Again 
there  is  an  inevitable  tendency  to  make  judges  the 
mouthpieces  of  our  virtuous  indignation.  All  vul- 
gar people  love  to  hear  a  good  scolding  properly 
appHed.  Many  men  who  resent  a  peremptory 
summons,  reeking  of  pains  and  penalties,  to  serve 
on  a  jury,  feel  that  society  is  not  altogether  rotten 
when  they  read: 

"The  Judge  then  assumed  the  black  cap  and  addressed  the 
prisoner  as  follows:  'John  Jones,  you  have  been  convicted  of 
a  dastardly  murder  by  an  impartial  jury  of  your  countrymen, 
and  the  sentence  of  the  Court  is  that  you  be  taken  from  this 
Court  .  .  .  and  hanged  by  the  neck  till  you  be  dead,  and  God 
have  mercy  on  your  soul.'" 

This  gratifies  all  the  lingering  nursery  morality 
in  the  common  man,  and  it  is  none  the  less  pleasing 
to  him  that  the  Judge  is  attired  in  a  costume  ex- 
clusively associated  with  the  pronouncement  of 
doom,  and  is,  therefore,  invested  with  a  kind  of 
halo,  or,  as  more  irreverent  persons  might  say,  a 
kind  of  tabooing  power.  The  Judge  would  not  be 
felt  to  be  "voicing"  the  community  if,  wearing  or- 
dinary morning  dress,  he  said,  merely: 

"Mr.  Jones,  the  legal  consequence  of  the  foreman's  re- 
marks is  that,  unless  you  succeed  in  persuading  the  Court  of 
Appeal  to  quash  the  conviction  or  unless  you  obtain  a  reprieve 
from  the  Home  Secretary,  you  will  be  executed  as  the  law  directs. 
I  do  not  wish  to  intrude  into  the  question  of  your  religious 

184 


LAW  AND   THE  GREAT  STATE 

opinions,  but,  if  you  desire  it,  the  chaplain  shall  wait  upon 
you,  your  solicitor  and  your  intimate  friends  are  at  your  ser- 
vice, and  you  shall  have  every  opportunity  of  settling  your 
affairs  in  a  manner  as  satisfactory  as  this  unfortunate  occasion 
permits." 

No  doubt,  however,  the  judges  and  lawyers  of  the 
Great  State  will  feel  it  less  incumbent  on  them  to 
reproduce  the  violence  and  fierceness  of  the  past 
than  they  do  now.  The  modern  parent  can  bring 
up  children  without  incessantly  flourishing  a  big 
stick,  and  it  is  time  the  law  came  up  a  little  nearer 
to  the  present  level  of  civilisation.  .  .  . 

In  this  connection  it  is  instructive  to  remember 
the  politeness  of  the  Athenians.  Readers  of  Plato's 
Phmdo  will  remember  the  civility  of  the  executioner 
to  Socrates  when  he  presented  the  hemlock  and 
lucidly  explained  how  it  would  work  This  is  quite 
an  advance  on  pinioning  and  blindfolding  the  vic- 
tim or  preventing  him  forcibly  from  committing 
suicide.  On  the  one  hand  one  observes  barbaric 
insult  and  a  brutish  vindictiveness,  on  the  other 
a  dignified  appeal  to  human  dignity  and  citizenship 
even  in  a  criminal  condemned.  Still  more  startling 
to  modern  notions  is  Socrates 's  expression  of  attach- 
ment to  the  laws  of  Athens  when  Crito  urges  him 
to  escape.  To  Socrates  the  laws  appear  almost  as 
friendly  deities  who  have  watched  over  him  from 
the  cradle,  and  whom  he  is  bound  by  the  ob- 
ligation of  past  benefits  not  to  defy.  Mr.  Zim- 
mern  explains  this  attitude  very  well  in  the  mas- 

I8S 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

terful    chapter   on  "Law"  in   his    Greek  Common- 
wealth. * 

"We  have  our  Constitution  written  or  unwritten  and  the 
ever-changing  body  of  our  Statute  Law.  But  they  are  remote 
from  our  daily  life.  We  do  not  ourselves  enforce  them  or 
even  know  them.  .  .  .  Between  us  and  the  enforcement  of  law 
stand  the  policeman  and  the  magistrate:  between  us  and  the 
making  of  law  stand  Parliaments  and  the  government.  But 
in  Athens  there  was  no  such  thing  as  the  'government'  as 
distinct  from  the  people." 

There,  perhaps,  Mr.  Zimmern  puts  his  hand  upon 
the  essential  difference  in  spirit  between  that  an- 
cient civiHsation  and  our  present  confusion.  Our 
modern  States — and,  so  far  as  the  law  goes,  this  is 
true  even  of  the  American  republic — derive  from 
bullying  monarchs,  bullying  dukes  and  earls  and 
barons  who  bullied  their  tenants  and  so  down;  and 
we  have  an  enormous  traditional  incubus  of  vile 
aggressions  to  shake  off  before  the  Great  State  will 
be  able  to  emulate  the  fine  nobility  of  those  ancient 
cities.  It  must,  moreover,  be  noted  that  a  mere 
replacement  of  feudalism  by  a  sham  democratic 
bureaucracy  is  not  likely  to  give  us  any  great  in- 
crease of  sweetness  and  light  in  our  courts — or  else- 
where. The  spirit  of  bureaucracy  is  to  distinguish 
between  the  official  and  the  citizen,  and  it  is  typical 
of  this  that  the  London  trams  are  labelled  "L.  C.  C.," 
and  that  the  notices  in  the  public  parks  are  signed 
"By  Order  L.  C.  C." — showing  that  these  things  are 

'  The  Greek  Commonwealth,  p.  125.     (Clarendon  Press,  1911.) 

186 


LAW  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

not  the  property  of  the  people  of  London,  but  of  a 
select  and  fortunate  body  of  adventurers  in  controL 
This  is  quite  alien  from  the  magnificent  inscription 
of  "S.  P.  Q.  R."  of  the  Roman  banner. 

But  in  the  Great  State  the  tram  and  the  post 
notices  will  say,  and  not  only  say  but  mean,  "This 
belongs  to  the  Londoners,"  and  the  mail-cart  or 
railway  signal  will  say,  "This  mail-cart  or  rail- 
way signal  belongs  to  the  Englishmen";  so,  when 
the  prisoner  stands  in  front  of  the  judge,  that 
judge  will  not  only  be,  but  also  appear,  a  reason- 
able civil  gentleman  instead  of  a  Minos  in  minia- 
ture. 

Such  a  state  of  things  as  Mr.  Zimmern  describes, 
of  course,  necessitated  a  rotation  of  citizens  in  dif- 
ferent offices;  there  were  no  "officials"  because 
every  one  had  office  in  turn;  the  ordinary  Athenian 
citizen  was  personally  familiar  with  both  judicial 
and  legislative  work.  Such  a  participation  is  abso- 
lutely necessary  for  a  civilised  relation  between  the 
law  and  the  ordinary  man.  The  requisite  leisure 
of  the  Athenian  citizen,  no  doubt,  reposed  on  a 
foundation  of  slave  labour;  in  the  Great  State 
it  will  rest  on  a  foundation  of  power-increasing  ma- 
chinery. The  essential  point  is  for  every  citizen 
to  regard  justice  and  legislation  as  part  of  his  own 
work,  and  the  whole  apparatus  of  the  State  as  his 
possession,  instead  of  as  alien  things  imposed  on 
him  by  such  persons  as  cabinet  ministers  and  judges. 
Such  an  achievement  can  only  spring  from  a  new 

187 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

harmony  between  law  and  custom,  order  and  free- 
dom, and  from  a  local  connection  in  whatever  re- 
mains localised.  I  do  not  mean  that  such  localisa- 
tions need  necessarily  be  those  of  an  agricultural 
community  or  the  Normal  Social  Life.  I  am  speak- 
ing of  local  units  of  thought  and  administration. 
The  unit  may  be  that  of  a  township  or  county,  but 
clearly  much  law  arising  out  of  local  matters  must 
be  administered  throughout  a  number  of  distributed 
circles,  and  cannot  be  too  rigidly  centrahsed.  Now, 
the  citizenship  of  the  ancient  civilised  state  was 
destroyed  just  in  so  far  as  the  feudal  military  system 
crushed  out  civic  Hfe,  and  the  feudal  or  territorial 
units  of  justice  were  in  turn  crushed  out  by  the 
centralisation  of  justice  as  the  bigger  States  of 
Europe  came  to  birth  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth 
centuries.  Modern  citizenship  was  scarcely  likely 
to  flourish  in  what  Mr.  Wells  calls  the  "jerry-built 
nationalities"  of  the  last  fifty  years,  or,  even  where 
the  nationality  already  existed,  in  the  welter  of 
the   industrial   revolution. 

The  law  of  the  Great  State  should,  therefore,  not 
be  too  highly  centralised,  and  should  leave  rooms 
under  its  catholic  universality  for  local,  and  not 
merely  local,  but  a  certain  kind  of  specialised  Justice. 
Much  admirable  work  is  done  by  Commercial  Court 
judges  and  by  magistrates  paid  and  unpaid.  By 
"specialised  Justice"  I  mean  the  kind  of  work  that 
is  done  by  the  Commercial  Court  or,  on  a  smaller 
scale,  by  the  Incorporated  Law  Society's  Discipline 

1 88 


LAW  AND   THE  GREAT  STATE 

Committee  or  any  Court  Martial.  I  believe  that 
the  Great  State  will  develop  wide  extensions  of 
specialised  justice.  Subject  to  the  right  of  appeal, 
better  justice  can  generally  be  obtained  from  men 
who  are  well  acquainted  with  the  subject-matter 
before  them.  Juries  often  make  hideous  blunders 
in  civil  actions  concerning  complicated  business 
affairs  of  which  they  know  nothing.  "Judicial 
ignorance"  has  become  a  proverbial  phrase.  But, 
were  the  defeated  litigant  to  appeal  from  an  expert 
Court  of  first  instance,  the  subject-matter  would 
have  been  already  well  cooked  and  served  up  for 
the  purely  legal  mind. 

There  is,  in  all  litigation,  a  curious  little  conflict 
between  reality  and  the  apparatus  that  has  to  deal 
with  it.  There  is  a  struggle  between  the  issue  and 
the  process.  What  the  lawyer  wants  is  the  simpH- 
fication  of  facts;  what  the  layman  wants  is  the 
simplification  of  law.  The  layman  often  has  a  touch- 
ing belief  in  the  utility  of  codes  because  he  is  unaware 
that  foreign  codes  are  interpreted  largely  in  the 
Hght  of  past  litigation  about  them.  A  code  cannot 
altogether  do  away  with  the  difficulty  of  forcing 
facts  into  the  strait-waistcoat  of  legal  definition. 
What  can  be  done,  however,  is  to  increase  statutes 
like  the  Partnership  Act,  1890,  which  summarise  and 
boil  down  a  multitude  of  decided  cases.  If  our 
jurisprudence  is  to  justify  the  maxim  "Ignorantia 
legis  neminem  excusat,"  then  it  must  be  thoroughly 
proof  against  Bentham's  ampHfication,  "Ignorance 

13  189 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

of  the  law  excuses  no  one  except  the  lawyer."  If  it 
is  to  adopt  the  old  equity  motto  ' '  No  wrong  without 
a  remedy,"  then  it  must  be  so  framed  and  so  made 
acceptable  to  the  general  understanding  that  no 
wronged  citizen  can  fail  to  be  conscious  that  he  has 
at  least  some  sort  of  remedy.  It  should  not  be 
impossible  so  to  simplify  the  law  in  its  elementary 
stages  that  the  necessarily  abstruse  points  are  only 
those  which  have  to  be  decided  in  the  Courts  of 
Appeal. 

Decisions  of  a  court  of  first  instance  are  accepted 
as  final  more  often  from  the  litigant's  disinclination 
to  gamble  than  from  his  thinking  that  the  decision 
is  irrefutable  in  itself.  Such  a  simplification  as  I 
have  suggested  could  be  achieved  by  a  series  of 
statutes  which  (a)  boil  down  and  clarify  the  case 
law  of  each  preceding  twenty  years  and  (b)  boil  down 
and  clarify  the  crude,  or  perhaps  experimental, 
legislation  on  any  given  subject  during  the  same 
period,  much  as  excellent  soup  may  be  made  out 
of  bones.  In  some  such  fashion  the  lawyer  would 
find  his  facts  more  readily  pigeonholed  in  advance, 
and  the  layman  would  find  his  law  less  difficult  to 
assimilate.  I  do  not  see  why  there  should  not  be 
some  special  department  of  the  public  service  of 
the  Great  State  engaged  continually  in  this  process 
of  stewing  a  sort  of  legal  stockpot  for  legislative 
stuff. 

If  one  development  is  more  certain  than  another 
in  the  future,  it  is  the  unification  of  international 

190 


LAW  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

law  on  matters  concerning  marriage,  divorce,  suc- 
cession to  property,  the  renvoi,  etc.  The  tests  of 
nationality  and  residence  are  bound  to  supersede 
the  vague  and  inadequate  test  of  domicile  to  which 
the  United  Kingdom  and  many  English-speaking 
communities  so  obstinately  cling.  A  doctrine 
which  grew  up  in  the  Dark  Ages,  when  there  was  no 
nationality  and  but  little  travelHng  as  we  know  it 
now,  cannot  but  create  the  boundless  confusion  and 
uncertainty  that  the  doctrine  of  domicile  does  at 
present  create  in  English-speaking  civilisation.  Even 
if  the  Great  State  be  not  itself  international,  the 
development  of  an  international  intelligence  must 
surely  end  those  ridiculous  anomalies  which  perplex 
the  layman  and  enrich  the  lawyer  of  to-day. 

Beyond  these  issues  I  find  little  to  say  in  the  way  of 
generalisation  about  the  law  of  the  Great  State. 
I  am  not  a  Socialist,  though  I  have  to  admit,  with 
all  sane  men,  the  manifest  necessity  of  an  increasing 
public  control  of,  and  property  in,  the  main  social 
services.  Clearly  the  laws  of  possession  must  follow 
the  changing  ideas  of  the  nature  of  what  is,  so  to 
speak,  property-able.  With  the  decline  of  the 
bureaucratic  movement,  and  subject  to  the  fore- 
going proviso,  it  is  not  unreasonable  to  expect  a 
rapid  and  successful  assimilation  of  the  law  of  real 
property  to  the  law  of  personal  property  instead 
of  its  departmental  complication  by  officials.  More- 
over, the  mockery  of  justice  due  to  the  publicity  of 
legal  proceedings  which  are  worse  than  useless,  except 

191 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

under  conditions  of  more  or  less  limited  privacy, 
will  presumably  cease  to  exist.  I  allude  more  par- 
ticulariy  to  cases  of  blackmail,  of  divorce,  or  of 
libel  and  slander.  I  need  not  enlarge  on  the  effects 
of  publicity  regarding  blackmail  or  divorce,  but 
I  may  add  that  the  publicity  of  libel  and  slander 
proceedings  often  denies  relief  to  all  but  that  par- 
ticular class  of  litigants  who  seek  pecuniary  damages 
rather  than  the  rehabilitation  of  character.  But 
this  is  a  mere  obvious  step  in  civilisation  that  will 
be  reached  long  before  the  Great  State  can  be  more 
than  dawning. 

It  is  difficult  to  anticipate  any  particular  develop- 
ments of  the  law  governing  the  status  of  women, 
either  as  dependent  or  independent  of  men,  when 
the  whole  institution  of  monogamy,  so-called,  that 
now  exists  may  be  fundamentally  altered;  and  the 
difficulty  is  even  more  formidable  in  regard  to  chil- 
dren and  succession  to  property.  Such  matters  I 
will  leave  to  my  colleagues  with  a  certain  relief. 

As  to  criminals,  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  criminal 
law  of  the  Great  State  will  be  of  as  little  immediate 
consequence  to  the  citizen  of  the  Great  State  as 
it  is  to  the  well-to-do  citizen  of  to-day.  As  Hobbes 
well  puts  it: 

"Every  Sovereign  ought  to  cause  Justice  to  be  taught,  which 
(consisting  in  taking  from  no  man  what  is  his)  is  as  much  as 
to  say,  to  cause  men  to  be  taught  not  to  deprive  their  neighbours, 
by  violence  or  fraud,  of  anything  which  by  the  sovereign  au- 
thority is  theirs." 

192 


LAW  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

To  this  most  men  are  ready  enough  to  subscribe. 
Our  criminal  law,  a  peculiar  blend  of  barbaric  violence, 
medieval  prejudices,  and  modem  fallacies,  affects 
only  the  more  or  less  submerged  portion  of  the  com- 
munity, whose  semi-starvation  not  only  of  material 
comforts,  but  also  of  all  the  higher  pleasures  that 
make  life  worth  living,  will  presumably  not  continue 
in  the  Great  State.  Where  a  citizen  has  every- 
thing to  lose  by  violence — to  wit,  his  reputation,  his 
earning  power,  his  liberty — where  can  the  inducement 
to  violence  exist?  By  robbery  he  actually  risks  the 
loss  of  what  he  can  honestly  earn,  and  he  is  not 
likely  to  rob  unless  he  is  a  collector — from  whom  no 
man  is  safe — or  actuated  by  some  mania  for  the 
acquisition  of  property  on  a  large  scale.  And  as 
for  murder  and  such  like  offences,  they  are  nowa- 
days far  more  often  the  results  of  the  economic 
pressure  under  which  we  live  than  of  any  innate 
evil  in  men.  It  is  merely  silly  to  kill  a  wife  or  con- 
cubine when  there  are  means  to  divorce  the  one  or 
to  make  decent  provision  for  the  other.  The  want 
of  these  things  manufactures  fifty  per  cent,  of  our 
murderers.  It  is  equally  absurd  to  kill  an  illegiti- 
mate child  if  its  birth  does  not  pillory  the  mother 
so  that  her  earning  power  is  reduced  exactly  in 
proportion  to  her  necessity  for  more.  There  again 
is  a  class  of  ofTence  for  which  the  Great  State  will 
leave  no  inducement.  Again,  there  is  a  large  cate- 
gory of  crimes  demanding  medical  rather  than 
legal  treatment. 

193 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

In  the  end  I  conceive  that  the  Great  State  will 
have  little  more  to  consider  in  the  way  of  crime 
than  those  inevitable  clashes  of  jealousy,  the  Crimes 
of  Passion.  Sordid  crime  will  disappear;  only  ro- 
mantic crime  will  remain. 

1.  I  mean  something  far  more  drastic  than  the 
statute  revision  that  is  going  on  to-day,  and  the  recent 
suppression  of  discussion  in  the  House  of  Commons 
removes  the  old  obstacles  to  symmetrical  reform. 

2.  Even  romantic  crimes  are  peculiar  to  men  or 
women  of  no  wide  intellectual  interests  or  recrea- 
tions who  by  reason  of  their  limitations  cannot  shake 
off  the  obsession  of  a  particular  person  or  a  fixed  idea. 

To  write  on  the  problem  of  the  law  in  the  Great 
State  is  as  difficult  as  to  describe  a  strange  country 
seen  from  an  aeroplane.  Only  the  crudest  outlines 
emerge;  all  the  essential  characteristics  of  colour 
and  scheme  and  detail  remain  gray  and  blurred. 
I  sketch  only  what  I  can  see.  Yet,  though  it  may  be 
difficult  to  discern  a  celestial  city,  the  Great  State 
will  at  least  avoid  "mistaking  memories  for  hopes," 
to  adopt  Hallam's  famous  sentence  about  the  states- 
men of  medieval  Italy.  I  mean  that  the  Law  of  the 
Great  State  will  be  untrammelled  by  memories  of 
the  golden  age  or  a  state  of  Nature;  it  will  seek  no 
inspiration  from  imaginary  theodicies  or  pedigrees; 
it  will  be  inviolate  by  greed  or  superstition.  That 
Law  may,  perhaps,  in  sober  fact  embody  and  pro- 
claim the  harmony  of  a  better  world. 


DEMOCRACY  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

BY   CECIL   CHESTERTON 


VII 
DEMOCRACY  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

All  free  men  feel  that  the  only  tolerable  condi- 
tion of  Government  is  Democracy.  No  such  man 
will  tolerate  the  compulsory  direction  of  his  actions 
by  any  temporal  authority  save  the  general  will  of 
his  fellow-citizens.  This  great  truism  I  shall  assume 
as  the  foundation  of  all  that  I  have  to  say  in  this 
essay.  With  those  who  do  not  feel  its  truth,  with 
those  who  regard  a  Hereditary  Aristocracy  or  mere- 
ly the  Rich  or  Experts  or  Men  in  Advance  of  their 
Age  as  the  proper  repositories  of  political  power  I 
shall  not  here  argue.  I  will  argue  with  them  when 
they  have  answered  the  plain  question  of  the  Jesuit 
Suarez,  "If  sovereignty  is  not  in  the  People,  where 
is  it?" 

Democracy,  then,  we  assume  as  the  fundamental 
condition  of  the  state  of  society  which  we  desire  to 
create;  but  it  is  of  vital  importance  to  have  in  our 
minds  a  clear  and  unalterable  idea  of  what  Democ- 
racy means.  Democracy  means  Government  by 
the  General  Will.  That  is  to  say,  it  means  that 
such  laws  as  the  mass  of  the  population  approves 
are  passed  and  enforced,   while  such  laws  as  are 

197 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

obnoxious  to  the  mass  of  the  population  are  rejected. 
It  is  clear  that  this  has  on  the  face  of  it  nothing  to 
do  with  special  devices  such  as  representation,  by 
which  modern  men  have  attempted  to  achieve  the 
end  of  Democracy.  Despotic  institutions,  heredi- 
tary rulers,  and  representative  bodies  must  alike  be 
judged  from  the  democratic  standpoint  by  whether 
they  do  or  do  not  result  in  a  system  of  Government 
which  accords  with  the  general  will  of  the  people. 
Democracy,  considered  in  this  sense,  is  not  a  new 
thing  (as  our  Moderns  suppose) ,  but  just  about  the 
oldest  thing  in  the  world.  In  what  Mr.  Wells  has 
christened  "The  Normal  Social  Life"  practical 
Democracy  has  always  prevailed  in  the  matters 
which  most  deeply  affect  the  ordinary  existence  of 
the  common  man.  Now  and  then,  no  doubt,  a  far-off 
ruler  not  chosen  by  him  might  force  the  common 
man  to  take  part  in  a  war  which  was  not  of  his 
making.  Taxes  not  levied  with  his  consent  would 
occasionally  be  imposed  upon  him.  But  in  the 
matters  that  concern  his  daily  life,  in  his  sowing 
and  reaping,  in  his  buying  and  selling,  in  his  marry- 
ing, in  the  bearing  and  upbringing  of  his  children, 
in  his  reHgion,  and  in  all  other  things  for  which  such 
a  man  normally  cares,  his  actions  would  be  regulated 
by  the  customs  of  his  tribe  or  commune,  and  any 
disputes  would  be  settled  by  a  council  of  his  neigh- 
bours. That  is  to  say,  these  matters  would  be  settled 
by  the  general  will.  He  would  be  living,  whether  he 
knew  it  or  not,  under  the  conditions  of  Democracy. 

198 


DEMOCRACY  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

Now  in  this,  as  in  other  matters,  what  we  must 
seek  to  effect  is  a  return  to  what  is  wholesome  and 
natural  to  Man  in  the  Normal  Social  Life  while 
availing  ourselves  of  the  advantages  which  a  more 
elaborate  system  of  society  affords  us.  We  must 
seek  under  the  conditions  imposed  by  the  growth  of 
larger  States  and  the  consequent  necessity  of  a  more 
extensive  political  organisation  to  obtain  that  which 
is  obtained  so  easily  in  a  simple  society  by  the  meet- 
ing of  villagers  under  a  tree. 

The  matter  is  the  more  urgent  because  so  long 
as  our  system  of  government  remains  essentially 
undemocratic  every  step  in  the  direction  of  Collec- 
tivism will  be  a  step  away  from  Democracy.  It  is 
no  use  denying  that  the  "permeation"  of  our  poli- 
ticians and  others  with  what  are  called  "Socialist" 
ideas  has  tended,  up  to  the  present,  rather  to  dimin- 
ish than  to  increase  the  power  of  the  General  Will. 
Not  only  have  measures  directed  towards  the  regimen- 
tation of  the  poor  and  tending,  not  to  Collectivism, 
but  to  the  Servile  State  been  rushed  through  under 
the  inspiring  title  of  "Social  Reform,"  but  even 
where  the  direct  Nationalisation  of  capital  was  in- 
volved the  rich  have  known  how  to  turn  the  Col- 
lectivist  philosophy  to  their  use.  An  example  at 
once  deplorable  and  farcical  may  be  found  in  the 
extraordinary  history  of  the  National  Telephone 
Company,  whose  monopoly  was  first  secretly  created 
and  then  ostentatiously  bought  (at  an  exorbitant 
price)  by  "the  Nation"— that  is,  by  the  politicians, 

199 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE  GREAT  STATE 

some  of  whom  had  also  been  directors.  I  can  con- 
ceive no  state  of  society — ^not  even  a  frank  plutocracy 
— more  odious  than  one  in  which  the  governing  class 
held  all  the  economic  power  and  administrated 
everything,  nominally  on  behalf  of  the  public, 
really  on  their  own.  And  that  plutocratic  Collec- 
tivism is  an  extremely  likely  end  to  the  efforts  of  a 
generation  of  Socialists,  unless  the  machinery  of  the 
State  can  be  made  really  to  reflect  the  General  Will. 

The  method  by  which  most  modern  societies  have 
attempted  to  solve  the  problem  of  Democracy  is 
the  method  of  Representation.  Since  it  is  obviously 
impossible  that  all  the  members  of  a  great  modern 
Nation,  still  more  of  the  larger  federations  of  men 
which  the  future  will  probably  see,  to  meet  together 
in  one  place,  and  there  to  discuss  all  the  details  of 
political  administration,  it  is.  thought  that  the 
same  end  might  be  achieved  if  certain  groups  of 
such  men  delegated  their  power  to  some  person 
chosen  by  them  who  should  have  their  authority 
to  speak  in  their  name. 

Now  it  is  clear  that  the  success  of  this  experiment 
depends  essentially  upon  the  exact  correspondence 
between  the  actions  of  the  delegate  and  the  wishes 
of  those  from  whom  his  authority  is  derived.  I  say 
this  is  clear  to  any  one  who  has  attempted  to  think 
out  the  problem  of  representation.  It  is  apparently 
by  no  means  clear  to  a  great  many  writers  in  the 
press  or  to  a  great  many  speakers  on  political 
platforms.    These  people  are  forever  drawing  an  en- 

200 


DEMOCRACY  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

tirely  meaningless  distinction  between  "a  Dele- 
gate" and  what  they  call  "a  Representative." 
What  this  distinction  means  I  have  never  been  able 
to  conceive.  A  man  must  vote  either  according  to 
the  wishes  of  his  constituents  or  against  those 
wishes.  If  he  does  the  former  he  is  acting  as  a 
faithful  delegate  would  act.  If  he  does  the  latter,  he 
is  neither  a  delegate  nor  a  representative.  He  is  an 
Oligarch.  For  how  can  we  say  that  a  man  "repre- 
sents" Slocum  when  he  is  in  the  habit  of  saying 
"Aye"  where  the  inhabitants  of  Slocum  would,  if 
consulted,  say  "No"? 

Now  it  is  pretty  obvious  to  most  of  us  that,  in 
England  at  any  rate,  there  is  absolutely  no  such 
relation  as  I  have  predicated  as  essential  between 
the  "Representative"  and  the  people  he  is  supposed 
to  "represent."  With  the  special  causes  which  make 
this  divorce  more  complete  in  England  than  else- 
where I  shall  have  to  deal  in  a  moment.  But  apart 
from  those  special  causes  there  is  that  in  the  very 
nature  of  the  Representative  System  which  tends 
to  render  it  unrepresentative.  In  England  to-day 
the  Member  of  Parliament  is  not  really  in  any  sense 
chosen  by  his  constituents.  But  even  if  he  were 
so  chosen  it  would  still  be  true  that  the  very  fact  of 
his  having  been  marked  out  from  his  fellow- citizens 
for  special  governmental  functions  would  give  him 
a  point  of  view  which  would  not  be  quite  an  accurate 
mirror  of  the  mind  of  those  fellow-citizens.  Put 
him   in   a   room   with   several   hundred   other  men 

20I 


SOCIALISM  AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

similarly  marked  out  from  their  fellow-citizens,  and 
this  psychological  result  is  indefinitely  intensified. 
It  has  always  been  so  with  political  assemblies, 
however  democratic  their  constitution,  and  in  all 
probability  it  always  will  be  so  with  them. 

The  divorce  between  the  Politician  and  the  Citizen 
is,  of  course,  enormously  increased  when  the  former 
takes  to  politics  as  a  profession. 

The  Professional  PoHtician  is  the  dominant  figure 
in  the  Government  of  all  civilised  countries  to-day, 
and  nowhere  is  he  more  dominant  than  in  England, 
where  a  large  number  of  innocent  persons  refuse  to 
believe  in  his  existence. 

That  Politics  should  become  a  profession  was 
perhaps  inevitable  so  soon  as  the  government  of 
the  country  was  no  longer  the  affair  of  the  citizens 
themselves.  At  any  rate,  in  all  known  periods 
after  politics  had  emerged  from  the  primitive  con- 
dition of  the  village  community  the  Professional 
Politician  has  existed. 

I  shall  discuss  later  how  far  he  can  be  eliminated, 
but  while  he  exists  the  important  thing  is  to  recog- 
nise that  he  does  exist,  to  recognise  that  in  all 
Nations  which  have  developed  to  the  point  to  which 
England  has  developed  a  class  has  appeared  of 
men  who  make  the  government  of  the  people  their 
ordinary  means  of  livelihood. 

In  moments  of  high  civic  excitement  it  has  some- 
times been  possible  to  conduct  the  affairs  of  state 
without  the  payment  of  Politicians.     This  was  so, 

202 


DEMOCRACY  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

for  example,  in  the  high  hope  and  anger  of  the 
French  Revolution.  Then  men  entered  politics 
urged  by  a  passionate  desire  for  social  justice  and 
a  passionate  patriotism,  and  left  Politics  (sometimes 
by  the  Tumbrils)  poorer  than  they  were  in  the  first 
instance.  It  is  doubtful  whether,  in  any  case,  such 
self-devotion  could  be  made  permanent  in  times  of 
comparative  quiescence.  But  one  thing  is  certain: 
with  this  intense  self-devotion  to  the  common  weal 
inevitably  goes  an  instinct  that  Politicians  should 
be  poor  men.  The  great  and  determining  char- 
acters in  the  revolutionary  drama  of  France  boasted 
that  while  they  administered  millions  they  them- 
selves lodged  in  the  cheapest  lodgings  and  dined 
at  the  cheapest  restaurants. 

Nothing  could  be  more  absurd  than  the  present 
practice  in  England,  the  practice,  I  mean,  of  reward- 
ing success  in  politics  with  salaries  varying  from  £i  ,200 
to  £10,000  a  year,  and  then  pretending  that  these 
sums  are  of  no  account  at  all  to  the  persons  who 
receive  them.  Such  a  practice  directly  tends  to 
produce  corruption  of  the  worst  kind.  A  Pro- 
fessional Politician  may  be,  like  a  Professional 
House-Agent,  a  perfectly  honest  man — that  is,  he 
may  endeavour  to  give  in  return  for  his  salary  honest 
and  efficient  service  to  the  State.  But  we  all  know 
what  would  happen  if  it  were  a  general  assumption, 
which  it  was  "in  bad  taste"  to  challenge,  that  House- 
Agents  were  entirely  indifferent  to  their  fees  and 
were  actuated  solely  by  compassion  for  persons  who 

203 


SOCIALISM   AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

found  themselves  for  the  moment  homeless  and  by 
a  desire  to  see  them  adequately  housed.  Such  a 
general  assumption  would  be  used  by  really  dis- 
honest house-agents  to  cover  their  offences,  while 
the  honest  house-agent,  working,  no  doubt,  for 
money  but  fairly  earning  it,  would  find  himself 
handicapped.  And  that  is  exactly  the  condition 
of  English  Politics  to-day. 

Politics  in  England,  and  largely  throughout  the 
civilised  world,  are  for  the  most  part  a  means  of 
livelihood  for  those  who  concern  themselves  with 
them.  No  doubt  it  is  true  that  a  large  number  of 
men  enter  the  House  of  Commons  without  any  in- 
tention of  increasing  their  income,  some  from  vanity 
and  the  desire  for  an  honorary  distinction,  some 
(very  few)  with  a  desire  to  express  their  personal 
views,  and  here  and  there  (the  rarest  thing  of  all) 
a  man  determined  to  voice  the  opinions  of  his  con- 
stituency. But  these  are  not  the  men  who  direct 
Parliament  or  really  determine  the  Government 
of  the  Country.  The  men  who  do  this  are  the  Pro- 
fessional  Politicians. 

These  may  be  broadly  divided  into  two  classes. 
There  are  the  men  who  belong  by  birth  to  what  we 
may  call  the  governing  class.  These  are  considered 
to  have  a  right  to  co-option  into  salaried  political 
posts.  It  is  to  them  that  Mr.  Belloc's  amusing 
poem  refers: 

"It  happened  to  Lord  Lundy  then, 
As  happens  to  so  many  men, 
204 


DEMOCRACY  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

About  the  age  of  twenty-six 
They  shoved  him  into  Politics. 
In  which  profession  he  commanded 
The  salaries  his  rank  demanded." 

This  is  on  the  whole  the  most  harmless  and  least 
corrupt  kind  of  professionalism  in  politics.  Such 
men  are  apprenticed  to  politics  as  a  profession  (that 
is,  as  a  means  of  making  money)  just  as  men  of 
humbler  rank  are  apprenticed  to  be  Solicitors, 
Greengrocers,  or  Compositors,  because  their  parents 
happen  to  be  able  to  command  for  them  an  opening 
in  these  trades.  Such  men,  if  they  happen  to  be 
honest  men,  often  try  to  do  their  best  to  earn  their 
money  by  serving  the  community  to  the  best  of 
their  ability.  This  method  of  choosing  governors 
is  repugnant  to  Democracy,  but  is  not  clearly  re- 
pugnant to  plain  morals  or  to  the  national  interest. 
It  is  the  method  by  which  all  oligarchical  States  are 
governed.  It  was  the  method  by  which  England 
was  governed  during  the  eighteenth  and  the  greater 
part  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

A  much  worse  form  of  Political  ProfessionaHsm 
has  arisen  of  late  years.  Young  men,  conscious 
perhaps  of  some  talent,  enter  Parliament  with  the 
deliberate  intention  of  getting  a  salaried  place  from 
those  at  whose  disposal  such  places  and  salaries 
are  placed.  Such  a  man  violates,  of  course,  the 
essential  idea  of  representation  as  it  has  been  out- 
lined above.  His  intention  is  not  to  serve  his 
constituency,  but   to   serve   those   from   whom   he 

14  205 


SOCIALISM    AND   THE  GREAT  STATE 

expects  his  pecuniary  reward — that  is,  the  very 
Executive  which  he  is  supposed  to  check  and  crit- 
icise. If  a  sufficient  number  of  such  men  are  re- 
turned to  the  representative  assembly,  it  is  obvious 
that  such  an  assembly  will  exist  only  to  ratify  the 
decisions  of  the  Executive;  that  is  to  say,  from  the 
democratic  point  of  view,  it  will  not  exist  at  all. 
And  that  practically  is  the  state  of  the  case  at  the 
present  time. 

Men — that  is,  the  men  that  count — enter  Parlia- 
ment with  an  eye  to  a  professional  career.  This 
career  can  only  be  obtained  by  leave  of  the  small 
co-opted  group  which  constitutes  "the  Government" 
and  "the  Official  Opposition" — that  is,  those  who, 
though  not  at  the  moment  in  receipt  of  public 
money,  expect  to  receive  it  when  a  change  of  govern- 
ment shall  take  place.  He  knows  very  well  that 
certain  votes  and  speeches  will  hurt  his  chances  of 
ever  making  any  money  in  politics,  while  certain 
other  votes  and  speeches  will  help  him  to  do  so. 
Naturally,  Hke  any  other  man  pursuing  his  trade, 
he  desires  to  ingratiate  himself  with  his  customer; 
and  he  speaks  and  votes  accordingly.  Add  to  this 
the  fact  that  in  England  the  Executive  has  the  power 
at  any  moment  of  ordering  a  dissolution  of  Parlia- 
ment, that  Elections  are  very  expensive,  that  only 
very  rich  men  can  afford  to  finance  their  own  can- 
didatures, that  a  vast  secret  fund  exists  to  finance 
such  candidatures,  and  that  this  fund  is  readily 
placed  at  the  disposal  of  those — and  of  those  only — 

206 


DEMOCRACY  AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

who  are  ready  to  act  as  the  subservient  retainers 
of  the  successful  professionals,  and  you  have  an 
adequate  explanation  of  the  undemocratic  character 
of  English  politics  to-day. 

I  have  already  said  that  it  is  dubious  whether  we 
can  ever  dispense  altogether  with  the  Professional 
Politicians  under  ordinary  conditions.  But  one 
thing  is  clear.  If  Politics  are  to  remain  a  profession, 
that  profession  must  in  the  public  interest  be  most 
strictly  safeguarded.  That  is  to  say,  every  temp- 
tation to  which  the  politician  may  be  subjected  to 
act  against  the  interest  of  those  who  employ  him 
must  be  most  carefully  provided  against;  and  any 
disposition  on  his  part  to  prefer  his  private  interests 
to  his  duty  of  obedience  to  the  general  will  must 
be  immediately  and  rigorously  punished.  It  is 
to  this  end  that  I  now  propose  to  devote  some 
consideration. 

One  necessity  stands  out  manifest  and  incontro- 
vertible. If  politics  are  to  be  a'Proiessionjhe  prof ession 
of  Executive  Administrator  must  be  kept  strictly  separate 
from  the  profession  of  Delegate  to  the  Legislature.  If 
this  is  not  so,  the  Legislature  can  never  in  the  nature 
of  things  be  really  independent  of  the  Executive, 
and  can,  therefore,  never  really  act  as  an  effective 
check  upon  it.  Every  member  of  the  Legislature 
body  will  be  on  the  lookout  for  the  more  profitable 
administrative  posts.  These  posts  will  of  necessity 
be  in  the  gift  of  the  Executive.  They  will  neces- 
sarily be  bestowed  upon  those  of  whose  conduct  the 

207 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

Executive  approves.  The  Executive  will  naturally 
approve  of  the  conduct  of  those  who  do  not  oppose 
or  even  criticise  it.  Therefore  there  will  be  (as 
in  fact  there  is  to-day)  an  immense  pressure  upon 
members  of  the  Representative  Body  not  to  act  in 
a  representative  fashion,  but  rather  to  use  all  the 
power  and  influence  they  possess  to  support,  not  those 
who  have  elected  them,  but  those  from  whom  they 
expect  benefits. 

It  is  obvious  that  in  any  state  of  society  some  one 
or  other  must  be  intrusted  with  the  business  of 
practical  executive  administration.  It  is  equally 
obvious  that  no  man  can  reasonably  be  expected  to 
take  on  such  a  task  as  a  mere  hobby.  He  must  be 
paid  for  it ;  it  must  be  his  means  of  livelihood,  in  a 
word,  his  profession.  To  that  there  is,  in  the  ab- 
stract, no  more  objection  than  there  is  to  the  pro- 
fession of  Doctor,  House- Agent,  or  Butcher,  pro- 
vided always  that  the  employer  of  such  a  man — 
i.  e.,  the  Community — has  as  full  a  control  over  him 
as  a  man  has  over  the  tradesmen  he  employs.  A 
butcher  does  not  supply  you  with  such  meat  as  he 
may  think  will  suit  your  health  or  personal  efficiency, 
but  with  such  meat  as  you  demand.  So  long  as  the 
expert  administrator  confines  himself  to  endeavour- 
ing to  satisfy  his  clients  as  the  butcher  does  and 
makes  no  pretence  to  an  authority  superior  to  that 
of  his  clients,  he  is  harmless  and  may  be  exceedingly 
useful.  It  is  impossible  to  deny  that  the  details  of 
administration  in  a  modem  state  are  so  complex  that 

208 


DEMOCRACY  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

the  sheer  routine  work  of  administration  does,  and 
must,  involve  a  degree  of  special  knowledge  to  which 
the  ordinary  citizen  cannot  and  would  not  choose 
to  attain.  So  does  the  trade  of  a  bootmaker.  I 
cannot  make  a  pair  of  boots.  I  have  to  ask  a  boot- 
maker to  make  them  for  me.  But — and  this  is  the 
essential  point — I  am  the  judge  of  the  pair  of  boots 
when  made:  if  they  do  not  fit  me  I  reject  them  and 
dismiss  my  bootmaker.  I  am  in  no  way  deterred 
from  following  this  course  by  the  assurance  that 
the  bootmaker  is  "an  expert"  or  that  he  is  "more 
advanced"  than  I,  or  by  any  other  of  the  pretences 
by  which  oligarchy  is  being  once  more  foisted  upon 
the  people. 

The  great  problem,  then,  is  that  of  the  control  of 
the  necessary  professional  administrator  by  the 
General  Will.  It  is,  I  admit,  an  exceedingly  difficult 
problem,  and  for  the  present  I  can  see  no  solution 
save  the  old  expedient  of  a  representative  assembly — 
defective  as  I  know  that  expedient  to  be.  I  have 
often  wondered  whether  some  one  would  not  one 
day  hit  upon  a  method  of  extending  to  general 
politics  the  much  more  really  democratic  method 
of  the  Common  Jury.  I  have  often  had  a  fancy,  for 
example,  for  a  Second  Chamber  constituted  upon 
that  principle — a  name  chosen  by  lot  from  the  voting 
list  of  every  constituency,  attendance  to  be  com- 
pulsory, and  a  reasonable  and  equal  remuneration  to 
be  granted  to  every  person  compelled  to  attend. 
I  am  quite  confident  that  such  a  chamber  would 

209 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

represent  the  General  Will  a  great  deal  better  than 
either  the  House  of  Lords  or  the  House  of  Commons 
has  done  in  the  past,  and  would  make  very  short 
work  (to  the  great  satisfaction  of  the  mass  of  the 
population)  of  much  legislation  that  has  passed  with 
ease  and  with  "the  consent  of  all  parties"  through 
our  present  Parliament. 

But  I  do  not  pretend  to  have  any  such  scheme 
ready  for  practical  advocacy;  and  so  for  the  present 
we  must  rest  content  with  the  representative  system, 
doing,  at  the  same  time,  all  that  we  can  to  prevent 
its  abuse,  to  mitigate  its  inevitable  failings,  and, 
above  all,  to  keep  it  continually  controlled  by  the 
direct  expression  of  the  General  Will. 

Let  us  first  draw  as  clear  a  distinction  as  we  can 
between  the  inevitable  defects  of  representation  and 
the  accidental  evils  to  which  it  does  make  it  quite 
intolerable  in  this  country. 

Take  the  latter  first. 

In  England  to-day  representative  government 
suffers  from  two  prime  evils.  First,  the  representa- 
tive assembly  is  not  independent  of  the  executive, 
and  therefore  cannot  control  it.  Secondly,  it  is  not 
freely  chosen  by  the  people,  nor  does  it  derive  its 
effective  mandate  from  the  people;  but  its  composi- 
tion is  selected  and  its  programme  devised  by  those 
very  professional  politicians  upon  whose  actions  it 
is  supposed  to  exist  as  a  check. 

I  have  already  adumbrated  my  view  of  the  first 
necessary  step  in  dealing  with  the  former  of  the 

2IO 


DEMOCRACY  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

two  evils.  The  members  of  the  representative  as- 
sembly should  in  no  case  whatsoever  be  allowed  to 
become  administrators  paid  by  the  Executive.  Let 
them  be  paid,  by  all  means,  for  the  services  they 
render  as  representatives  to  the  people  by  the  people 
whom  they  represent,  and  let  the  people  who  pay 
them  see  that  they  are  really  represented.  But  let 
them  all  be  paid  exactly  alike,  whether  they  support 
or  oppose  the  Executive,  and  let  there  be  a  strict 
rule  that  no  one  shall  within,  say,  ten  years  of  sitting 
in  the  legislature  receive  public  money  in  any  form 
from  the  Executive.  In  that  case,  if  commercial 
motives  enter  in  any  way  into  their  calculations,  they 
will  find  that  their  interest  lies  primarily  in  standing 
well  with  their  constituents.  Their  constituents  can 
deprive  them  of  their  salaries;  the  "Government" 
cannot.  On  the  lowest  motive,  therefore,  it  will  be 
better  for  them  to  please  those  who  elect  them  than 
those  whom  they  are  elected  to  control. 

What,  then,  will  become  of  "the  Ministry"?  It 
will  disappear.  The  professional  head  of  a  depart- 
ment— strictly  excluded  from  the  assembly — will 
remain.  The  popular  assembly  elected  to  control 
that  permanent  head  will  remain.  Probably  the 
assembly  will  find  it  convenient  to  divide  itself  into 
Committees  for  this  purpose,  though  such  Commit- 
tees should  have  no  more  than  investigatory  and 
advisory  powers.  The  decision  must  rest  with  the 
assembly  itself.  But  the  "Minister" — that  is,  the 
Professional  Politician  who  has  entered  Parliament 

211 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

by  pretending  to  represent  some  body  of  electors 
and  has  consented  for  a  salary  not  to  represent  them, 
but  to  represent  instead  the  Caucus  that  pays  him — 
for  him  the  new  Democracy  will  have  no  use. 

But  when  you  have  liberated  the  Representative 
Assembly  from  the  control  of  that  little  group  of 
Professional  Politicians  which  is  commonly  called 
"The  Government,"  but  which  I  have  always  pre- 
ferred to  designate  more  accurately  as  "The  Two 
Front  Benches,"  you  have  not,  therefore,  necessarily 
made  it  really  responsible  to  the  people.  That  is, 
you  have  not  achieved  Democracy.  It  must  be  in- 
sisted upon  again  that,  though  the  present  political 
regime  in  England  intensifies  all  the  evils  and 
dangers  of  Representative  Government  while  de- 
priving it  of  all  its  uses,  yet  there  are  evils,  there  are 
dangers  which  are  not  created  by  the  regime,  and 
which  would  not  necessarily  cease  with  the  overthrow 
of  that  regime.  They  are  found  in  America  and 
elsewhere  where  that  particular  regime  is  unknown. 
They  are  inherent  in  the  nature  of  Representative 
Institutions  themselves.  Every  body  of  men  cut  off 
from  the  ordinary  life  of  their  fellow-citizens  and 
vested  with  special  powers  tends,  unless  popularly 
controlled,  to  become  an  Oligarchy.  We  can  see  both 
in  history  and  at  the  present  time  examples  of  as- 
semblies internally  free  but  irresponsible,  and  govern- 
ing according  to  their  own  interests  or  prejudices, 
without  regard  to  popular  mandate.  The  Grand 
Council  of  Venice  was  such  an  assembly,  and  the 

212 


DEMOCRACY  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

English  House  of  Commons  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury; to  a  certain  extent  the  French  Chamber  is 
such  to-day. 

Against  this  peril  the  only  real  security  is  a 
vigilant  and  instructed  popular  opinion.  With  such 
an  opinion  always  goes  an  extreme  distrust  of  the 
representative,  a  feeHng  that  he  will  always  cheat 
you  if  he  can,  and  a  determination  that  he  shall  not 
be  allowed  to  do  so.  Walt  Whitman  saw  very  far 
indeed  into  the  truth  when  he  set  down  as  one  of 
the  conditions  of  his  ideal  State  that  the  people 
should  be  "always  ready  to  rise  up  against  the 
never-ending  audacity  of  Elected  Persons." 

The  chief  change  needed,  then,  is,  it  must  be  ad- 
mitted, a  change  in  the  popular  psychology.  Never- 
theless, there  are  changes  in  machinery  which  would 
be  the  necessary  accompaniments  of  such  a  change, 
and  which  may  do  a  great  deal  to  make  it  easier. 
And  here  I  come  to  methods  which  the  peculiar 
independence  of  the  several  States  of  the  Union  has 
already  enabled  America  to  put  to  the  test,  in  cer- 
tain cases,  upon  which  an  American  writer  may  be 
better  qualified  to  write  than  myself. 

Chief  among  these  is  the  re-creation  of  the  elec- 
toral unit  as  a  thing  capable  of  political  initiative. 
What  I  mean  is  this  We  say  that  Slocum  sent  Sir 
Josiah  Gudge  to  Parliament  to  carry  out  a  certain 
"programme."  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Slocum  had 
nothing  to  do  either  with  choosing  Sir  Josiah  or 
with  framing  his  programme.     It  could  have  noth- 

213 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

ing  to  do  with  either  as  things  stand  even  if  the 
special  corruption  incidental  to  the  English  political 
system  was  removed,  for  Slocum  has  no  organised 
and  articulate  political  existence.  In  a  word,  it 
has  no  initiative,  and  has  to  take  its  programme 
from  Sir  Josiah,  and  Sir  Josiah  from  whatever 
Unknown  Powers  may  have  decreed  his  candidature. 
It  is  obvious  that  if  we  are  to  have  democracy  this 
state  of  things  must  be  ended.  Whatever  body  of 
men  elect,  our  representatives  must  be  organised  for 
collective  action,  must  be  articulate,  must  be  ca- 
pable of  framing  their  own  demands,  of  choosing, 
controlling,  and,  if  need  be,  punishing  their  ser- 
vants. 

I  am  inclined  to  think  that  it  will  eventually  be 
found  that  a  better  system  of  representation  can  be 
obtained  by  representing  men  by  their  guilds  or 
trades  rather  than  by  their  localities.  The  geo- 
graphical method  of  election  really  dates  back  to  a 
time  when  small  local  units,  still  essentially  in  the 
phase  of  the  Normal  Social  Life,  had  a  natural 
homogeneity.  They  have  no  such  homogeneity 
to-day.  The  State  no  longer  consists  of  a  collection 
of  village  communes;  nor  is  the  type  of  State  the 
government  of  which  we  are  here  discussing  con- 
ceived as  being  organised  in  such  a  fashion.  But 
the  State  must  always  consist  of  groups  of  citizens 
co-operating  for  certain  necessary  social  purposes, 
and  it  is  to  the  Guilds,  which  will  naturally,  under 
a    system    of    co-operative    production,    spring   up 

214 


DEMOCRACY  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

throughout  industrial  worids,  that  I  should  look  to 
find  the  Electoral  Unit  of  the  future. 

I  do  not  wish  to  trespass  upon  the  subject  of  in- 
dustrial organisation,  which  is  dealt  with  in  this 
volume  by  other  and  abler  pens ;  but  it  is  so  essential 
to  Democracy  that  the  Electing  Body  should  be  one 
with  large  powers  of  control  over  its  own  affairs 
that  I  should  be  very  glad  to  see  these  Guilds  in- 
vested with  considerable  powers  of  self-government 
under  the  general  supervision  of  the  National  Ex- 
ecutive. Of  course,  it  would  not  do  to  give  the 
coal-miners,  for  example,  irresponsible  control  of  the 
coal-fields.  The  coal-fields  must  be  national  prop- 
erty; on  that  we  agree.  But  I  do  not  see  why  all 
details  of  management,  such  matters  as  the  hours 
of  labour,  provision  against  accident,  and  the  like, 
should  not  be  settled  directly  by  the  organised 
workers  concerned.  If  such  powers  were  vested  in 
these  Guilds,  you  would  start  with  the  immense  ad- 
vantage, from  the  democratic  point  of  view,  of  an 
electing  body  accustomed  to  debate,  to  decisive 
action,  and  to  the  control  of  its  own  affairs,  which 
would  be  able  to  thrash  out  the  instructions  to  be 
given  to  its  delegate,  and  to  send  him  to  the  repre- 
sentative assembly  with  a  real  mandate  derived 
from  themselves. 

Incidentally  it  should  be  remarked  that  such  an 
infusion  of  reality  into  the  operations  of  the  electoral 
unit  would  go  far  to  meet  such  cases  as  that  of 
the  United  States,  where  the  evils  arise,  not  from  the 

215 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

oligarchical  control  of  a  small  clique,  but  rather  from 
the  omnipotence  of  a  political  Machine  subject  to 
no  real  popular  control.  And  a  further  check  upon 
the  development  of  a  two-party  system  in  which 
there  is  no  wider  alternative  than  the  chances  of  two 
candidates  may,  perhaps,  be  found  in  some  such 
method  of  voting  as  Proportional  Representation 
affords.  Of  course  it  is  essential  that  the  control  of 
the  Electing  Body  over  the  delegates  should  be 
absolute.  Two  checks  on  their  action  would  greatly 
help  to  accomplish  this. 

The  first  check  is  the  Recall.  Not  only  should 
elections  be  reasonably  frequent,  but  a  certain  pro- 
portion of  the  Electors  should  at  any  time  have  the 
right  to  demand  a  general  poll  on  the  question  of 
whether  the  delegate  was  or  was  not  carrying  out 
the  mandate  of  his  constituents.  Should  the  vote 
go  against  him,  the  delegate  would  have  to  resign, 
and  another  would  be  elected  in  his  place.  The  mere 
threat  of  this  action  would  probably  be  enough  in 
most  cases  to  prevent  the  delegate  from  shamelessly 
and  continually  violating  his  trust,  as  is  so  often 
done  to-day. 

The  second  check  is  the  Referendum  accompanied 
by  the  Initiative.  How  powerful  a  weapon  even 
under  the  present  degrading  political  conditions  is  the 
popular  plebiscite  may  be  perceived  by  noting  the 
horror  with  which  the  Professional  Politicians  regard 
it,  and  the  panic  which  seized  them  when  one  of  their 
own  number  was  imprudent  enough  to  mention  it  a 

216 


DEMOCRACY  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

couple  of  years  ago.  But  for  the  Referendum  to  be 
a  really  effective  democratic  weapon  it  must  be 
capable  of  being  put  into  force,  not  merely  on  the 
initiative  of  the  legislature  itself  or  on  any  section  of 
it,  but  on  the  initiative  of  a  fixed  proportion  of  the 
Electors.  Indeed,  for  my  part,  I  am  disposed  to 
think  that  under  the  freer  political  system  such  as 
I  have  sketched  no  substantial  alteration  of  the  laws 
should  be  passed  without  a  direct  appeal  to  the 
popular  will.  To  those  who  are  incapable  of  looking 
beyond  the  corruptions  and  futilities  of  modern 
politics  such  a  pronouncement  will  doubtless  seem 
absurd.  But  we  are  presupposing  that  those  cor- 
ruptions and  futilities  are  at  an  end;  and  when  they 
are  at  an  end  there  will  be  no  need  whatsoever  for  all 
this  plethora  of  legislation  which  we  have  come  to 
think  of  as  something  inevitable.  When  one  comes 
to  consider  it  in  the  abstract  it  is  really  rather  absurd 
that  a  nation  should  have  to  keep  some  six  hundred 
men  busy  for  nine  months  in  the  year  at  the  inter- 
minable task  of  continually  altering  its  laws.  If 
just  laws  can  once  be  established,  it  is  reasonable  to 
suppose  that  for  some  considerable  time  at  any  rate 
they  will  prove  adequate  Doubtless  from  time  to 
time  some  unforeseen  change  in  economic  or  other 
conditions  may  necessitate  modifications,  but  I  do 
not  look  forward  in  the  Great  State  to  the  unending 
legislation  of  our  own  time — a  legislation  which  owes 
its  necessity  at  best  to  the  need  for  patching  up  a 
system  in  process  of  active  decay,  and  at  worst  to 

217 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

the  requirements  of  the  Party  "Programme"  and, 
what  is  much  more  important,  the  Party  War 
Chest  No  doubt  the  change  from  the  present  basis 
of  society  to  a  juster  and  healthier  one  will  mean  a 
good  deal  of  drastic  law-making — and  I  suspect  a 
good  deal  of  law-breaking  also — but,  once  the  change 
accomplished,  I  should  expect  a  vital  alteration  of  the 
laws  under  which  citizens  are  to  live  to  be  almost  as 
rare  a  thing  in  the  State  of  the  Future  as  it  was  in 
the  settled  and  happy  communities  of  the  past. 

Such  are  a  few  of  the  comparatively  rough  and 
crude  suggestions  that  I  would  make  for  the  demo- 
cratic organisation  of  the  State  of  the  future.  They 
pretend  to  be  nothing  more  than  an  outline,  and  even 
as  an  outline  they  will  doubtless  require  much 
modification.  Every  democrat  must  feel  a  certain 
disinclination  to  lay  down  hard-and-fast  conditions 
for  the  future,  if  only  for  this  reason,  that,  if  his 
democratic  faith  be  genuine,  he  desires  that  the 
people  should  have,  not  the  form  of  government  he 
likes,  but  the  form  of  government  they  themselves 
like.  That  is  what  has  always  made  me  dislike 
answering  detailed  questions  as  to  how  this  or  that 
would  be  done  "under  Socialism."  I  may  have 
thought  of  a  very  ingenious  answer,  but  it  does  not 
follow  that  it  is  the  answer  that  my  fellow-citizens 
will  give.  And  it  is  for  them,  not  for  me,  to  pro- 
nounce the  ultimate  decision.  Securus  judical  orhis 
terrarum. 

218 


WOMEN   IN   THE   GREAT   STATE 

BY   CICELY    HAMILTON 


VIII 
WOMEN   IN   THE   GREAT   STATE 

In  forecasting — or  rather  in  making  a  tentative 
endeavour  to  forecast — the  position  of  woman  in 
the  Great  State,  one  wrestles  from  the  outset  with 
difficulties;  whereof  the  first  and  most  obstinate 
is  the  practical  impossibility,  under  present  condi- 
tions, of  coming  to  a  definite  conclusion  as  to  how 
far  the  traditional  and  still  existing  inferiority  of 
woman — with  its  resultant  dependence,  mental  and 
economic,  upon  the  other  sex — is  the  product  of 
natural  demands  and  forces,  how  far  the  artificial 
creation  of  the  class  distinctions  of  the  Normal 
Social  Life.  That  is  to  say,  of  a  society  which, 
for  countless  generations,  has  looked  upon  its 
female  members  merely  as  the  breeding  and  love- 
making  class — the  wives  or  mistresses  of  its  male 
members  and  the  mothers  of  its  children.  It  would 
be  comparatively  easy,  of  course,  to  launch  out  into 
a  prophecy  of  inevitable  improvement  in  the  posi- 
tion of  such  a  class,  in  the  shape  of  amended  condi- 
tions of  wifehood  and  motherhood  and  so  forth; 
but  such  considerations  would  leave  the  essential 
point  untouched.    Amended  conditions  and  improve- 

15  221 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

ments  are  bound  to  come;  but  whether,  when  they 
do  come,  they  raise  woman  in  general  to  a  relatively 
higher  level  in  the  community  than  she  occupies  at 
present;  whether,  when  they  do  come,  they  endow 
her  with  freedom,  real  as  well  as  nominal,  or  leave 
her  adorned  and  shackled  with  comfortable  chains, 
is  a  question  to  which,  at  the  present  moment,  it 
might  be  rash  to  return  too  absolute  an  answer. 
One  has  hopes,  of  course,  encouraged  by  the  obvious 
trend  of  the  Woman's  Movement  of  to-day  towards 
independence — independence  at  any  cost,  mental, 
economic,  and  moral,  as  well  as  political;  but  as- 
pirations equally  fierce  and  far-reaching  have  been 
stifled  before  now,  and  may  be  stifled  again,  by  the 
gift  of  material  benefit.  Equitable  marriage  and 
illegitimacy  laws,  for  instance,  the  endowment  of 
motherhood,  and  the  prevention  of  sweating  are 
quite  compatible  with  continued  masculine  confu- 
sion of  the  terms  "woman"  and  "wife,"  and  with 
continued  feminine  acquiescence  in  such  masculine 
confusion  of  ideas.  A  parasite  is  none  the  less  a 
parasite  because  fed  well,  housed  well,  clothed  well, 
and  generally  made  much  of. 

If  we  suppose — as  I  think  we  are  entitled  to 
suppose — that  the  danger  I  have  indicated  is  in  the 
end  surmounted,  and  that  woman  in  the  Great  State 
is  recognised  as  an  individual  with  capacities  apart 
from  domesticity,  love-making,  and  child-bearing, 
with  an  existence  independent  of  husband,  lover,  or 
son,  her  position  in  the  State  will,  as  in  the  case  of  the 

222 


WOMEN   IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

male  citizen,  be  determined  by  two  factors — what 
the  State  has  the  right  to  demand  of  her,  and  what 
she,  on  her  side,  as  individual  and  citizen,  has  the 
right  and  the  energy,  or  power,  to  demand  of  the 
State.  .  .  .  What  the  State  has  the  right  to  de- 
mand of  her  will  be  that  she,  like  her  father,  her 
husband,  her  brother,  shall  conduct  herself  decently 
and  in  accordance  with  its  laws.  What  it  has  not 
the  right  to  demand  of  her — either  directly  or  in- 
directly, by  bribe  or  by  indirect  pressure — is  that 
she,  in  return  for  its  protection,  shall  consider 
herself  under  any  obligation  to  produce  its  future 
citizens. 

This  distinction  in  the  Great  State  must  be  made 
absolute,  clear,  and  emphatic;  since,  without  it, 
the  position  of  woman,  however  improved  mate- 
rially, however  safeguarded  by  law,  will  remain 
fundamentally  unaltered  and  fundamentally  un- 
sound. Unaltered— and  therefore,  essentially  un- 
dignified —  because  perpetuating  the  hoary  but 
active  tradition  that  woman  does  not  count  except 
as  a  wife  and  the  mother  of  children;  unsound, 
because  artificially  restricting  her  energies  and  pos- 
sibilities by  confining  them  to  the  channels  of 
sexual  attraction  and  reproduction  of  the  race. 
Once  admit  such  a  principle  into  the  conduct  of  any 
State,  however  great — the  principle  that  women  in 
general  can  deserve  well  of  the  social  organism  not 
directly  as  individuals,  as  workers  and  citizens,  but 
only   indirectly   through   their   husbands   and   the 

223 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

children  they  bear  them — and  you  reopen  the  door 
to  all  the  abuses  of  the  past:  to  the  grossest  forms 
of  tyranny  and  sex  dominance  on  the  one  side,  and, 
on  the  other,  to  degradation  spiritual  as  well  as 
bodily. 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  woman  of  the  near 
future  will  have  the  power,  as  she  will  cer- 
tainly have  the  right,  to  demand — in  her  own  in- 
terest as  in  that  of  the  community  at  large — 
that  this  distinction  shall  be  made.  (For  instance, 
to  take  a  concrete  case,  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  she 
will  be  energetic  and  clear-thinking  enough  to  insist 
that  such  a  needful  and  inevitable  measure  as  the 
State  Endowment  of  Motherhood  shall  not  take  the 
form  of  a  bribe  to  bear  children  or  an  economic 
stimulus  to  her  sexual  instincts.)  I  may  be  wrong; 
but,  as  I  see  it,  the  future  and  progress  not  only  of 
womanhood,  but  of  the  race  in  general,  depends 
largely  upon  whether  or  no  woman  is  able  to  insist 
that  the  satisfaction  of  her  sexual  instincts  and  the 
consequent  bringing  of  her  children  into  the  world 
shall  be  an  entirely  voluntary — in  other  words, 
an  entirely  natural — proceeding  on  her  part.  Until 
the  satisfaction  of  these  instincts  and  the  consequent 
bearing  of  children  do  become  entirely  voluntary, 
entirely  natural;  until  no  compulsion,  social  or 
economic,  drives  women  into  marriage  or  prosti- 
tution, it  is  practically  useless  to  imagine  that  you 
can  really  and  permanently  raise  the  level  of  the 
mothers  of  the  race.     (And  in  this  connection  I 

224 


WOMEN   IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

would  remind  those  who  still  cling  to  the  belief  that 
we  exist  only  for  sexual  attraction  and  motherhood 
that  if  they  are  correct  in  their  estimate  of  the  over- 
powering strength  of  our  natural  instincts,  these 
natural  instincts  can  surely  be  left  to  themselves — 
no  additional  or  artificial  stimulus  being  needed  in 
order  to  induce  us  to  fill  our  destiny.) 

I  may  possibly  be  misunderstood  when  I  say  that 
the  first  duty  of  an  enHghtened  community  towards 
its  women  will  be  to  secure  to  them  the  right  to 
refuse  marriage  and  motherhood;  but  I  say  it,  and 
say  it  with  emphasis.  The  common  sense  and  civic 
view  of  marriage  and  motherhood  is  that  in  them- 
selves, and,  as  far  as  the  community  is  concerned, 
these  natural  relationships  are  neither  good  nor  bad, 
desirable  nor  undesirable,  moral  nor  immoral;  that 
whether  they  are  desirable  or  undesirable,  moral  or 
immoral,  depends  upon  the  kind  of  marriage  and  the 
quaHty  of  the  parents  and  their  offspring.  Any 
system  that  encourages  indiscriminate  commercial 
marriage  on  the  part  of  women — marriage  for  the 
sake  of  a  home  or  breadwinner,  marriage  as  the  only 
alternative  to  the  social  stigma  of  spinsterhood,  and 
the  bearing  of  children  for  the  same  reasons — is  to 
be  deprecated  and,  in  the  Great  State,  will  be  depre- 
cated as  much  in  the  interest  of  the  child  as  of  the 
mother.  It  is,  of  course,  impossible  to  regulate  the 
workings  of  human  passion  and  attraction  as  you 
regulate  the  workings  of  a  watch;  men  and  women 
will  mate  for  foolish,  fleeting,  and  inadequate  reasons 

225 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

as  long  as  the  world  goes  round.  But  it  ought  to 
be  possible  to  insure  that  the  social  system  should 
not,  as  it  does  at  present,  encourage  marriage  and 
child  bearing  from  mean  and  inadequate,  if  entirely 
excusable  motives;  shall  not,  as  it  does  at  present, 
force  its  women  into  motherhood  through  the  press- 
ure of  poverty  or  the  insidious  cruelty  of  closing 
to  them  every  other  avenue  to  activity  and  advance- 
ment. It  ought  to  be  possible  for  a  sane  and  clear- 
thinking  society,  by  the  simple  process  of  securing 
to  women  alternative  means  of  livehhood,  alternative 
careers,  to  make  of  marriage  for  women  what  mar- 
riage for  women  never  yet  has  been — a  voluntary 
institution. 

The  entire  question  now  at  issue,  not  only  between 
Woman  and  the  State,  but  between  Woman  and 
Society  in  general,  can  be  narrowed  down  to  this: 
has  she,  Hke  the  other  half  of  the  race,  a  primary, 
individual,  and  responsible  existence?  or  is  she  what 
may  be  called  a  secondary  being — such  value  to  the 
community  as  she  possesses  being  derivative  only 
and  arising  out  of  her  family  relations  to  other 
persons?  Is  she,  in  short,  a  personaHty,  or  merely 
the  reproductive  faculty  personified?  ...  So  far — 
roughly  speaking  and  allowing  for  a  certain  number 
of  exceptions — she  has  counted  in  the  world's  history 
and  progress  in  the  secondary  sense  only;  as  the 
personification  of  the  reproductive  faculty,  as  wife, 
as  mistress,  and  as  mother  of  sons.  It  remains  to  be 
seen  whether  she  is  able  to  establish  and  maintain  a 

226 


WOMEN   IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

right  to  count  as  an  actual  personality,  an  individual 
and  direct  member  of  the  social  organism.  That 
right,  once  established,  would  bring  with  it  inevitably 
the  further  right  to  select  her  own  manner  of  living 
as  freely  as  a  man  does;  and  to  resent  legislative  or 
other  attempts  to  induce  her  to  support  herself  or 
serve  the  State  in  one  particular  fashion,  legislative 
or  other  attempts  to  make  the  sacrifice  of  mother- 
hood anything  but  a  purely  voluntary  sacrifice. 

One  realises  the  difficulties  of  so  complete  a  change 
not  only  in  the  attitude  of  man  to  woman,  but  in 
the  attitude  of  woman  towards  herself.  Two  of 
these  difficulties  at  the  present  day  loom  promi- 
nently; the  economic  and  the  sentimental.  The 
Great  State,  one  takes  it,  would  deal  trenchantly 
with  the  first — the  economic — difficulty;  even  its 
sourest  spinster  would  not  need  to  starve.  But  the 
stodgy  mass  of  false  sentiment  on  the  subject  of 
sexual  relations  and  children  that  has  come  down 
to  us  through  the  ages — the  glorification  of  mother- 
hood, however  compulsory,  however  stupidly  un- 
thinking— that  is  a  more  insidious  and  more  deadly 
matter.  It  is  through  that  stodgy  mass  of  false 
sentiment  that  the  woman  of  to  day  and  to-morrow 
has  got  to  wade  if  she  is  ever  to  attain  to  anything 
like  moral  and  intellectual  equality  with  her  brother 
and  her  mate.  And  be  it  noted  that,  in  order  to 
overcome  false  sentiment  and  false  idealism,  she 
must  refuse  most  steadfastly  to  take  advantage  of  it. 
If  the  Great  or  any  other  State  is  once  permitted 

227 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

to  look  upon  its  women  with  a  sentimental  eye,  the 
last  condition  of  those  women  will  be  even  as  their 
first.  Once  more  they  will  sink  back  into  the  class 
of  wives  and  mothers,  and  found  their  claims  to  con- 
sideration solely  upon  their  position  as  the  breeding 
factor  of  the  race;  whereupon  the  Law,  like  the 
society  from  which  it  emanates,  will  pet  them  and 
kick  them  by  turns.  Once  more  they  will  slide  back 
to  the  position  of  parasites  living  by  sexual  attraction 
and  finding  favour  in  the  eyes  of  husband  or  lover 
on  the  express  condition  that  they  do  not  presume 
to  compete  with  husband  or  lover  in  intellect. 

It  is  not,  I  think,  generally  recognised  how  largely 
— one  may  hope  entirely — the  undoubtedly  low  level 
of  intelligence  in  woman,  as  compared  with  man,  is 
the  direct  result  and  product  of  dire  economic 
necessity,  the  need  for  bread  or  the  need  for  success  in 
life.  It  has  paid  woman  in  the  past — in  some  walks 
of  life,  notably  marriage,  it  still  pays  them— to  be 
stupid;  intelligence  in  woman  has  been  an  obstacle 
to,  not  a  qualification  for,  motherhood.  The  con- 
sciousness of  superiority  is  a  pleasant  thing;  and  it 
is  a  sober  fact  that  for  countless  generations  the 
human  male  has  taken  real  and  active  pleasure  in 
despising  the  mental  attainments  of  the  human 
female;  has  insisted  with  emphasis  that  the  wife 
of  his  bosom,  the  mother  of  his  children,  should  be  a 
creature  he  could  look  down  upon  as  well  as  love. 
Standing  in  the  position  of  capitalist — of  employer 
in  a  compulsory  trade — the  average  husband  was 

228 


WOMEN   IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

able  to  dictate  terms,  to  bargain  for  and  obtain  in 
his  helpmeet  the  low  level  of  intellectuality  which  he 
considered  necessary  to  his  comfort  and  self-esteem. 
With  the  bitter  result  for  the  human  race  that  the 
mothers  thereof  have  been,  to  a  great  extent,  se- 
lected for  their  lack  of  wisdom  and  encouraged  to  be 
greater  fools  than  nature  intended  to  make  them. 

I  have  already  taken  it  for  granted  that  the  State 
of  the  future  will  deal  with  this  economic  temptation 
to  stupidity  on  the  part  of  woman  by  assuring  her 
bread  and  by  opening  to  her  other  careers  than  mar- 
riage, many  of  them  demanding  the  use  of  intel- 
ligence. Certainty  of  bread  alone  will  not  provide 
her  with  brains;  but,  by  automatically  removing  the 
need  to  cultivate  stupidity  for  a  livelihood,  it  will 
place  her  in  a  position  to  make  use  of  such  brain  as 
she  possesses;  with  probable  results  of  importance 
to  herself  as  well  as  to  the  race. 

It  may  possibly  be  urged  that  the  placing  of  the 
average  woman  in  a  position  of  economic  equality 
with  himself  would  not  necessarily  remove  the  deep- 
seated  desire  of  the  average  man  to  despise  the  part- 
ner of  his  joys  and  sorrows.  Under  present  condi- 
tions it  is  impossible  to  speak  with  certainty  on  the 
point ;  and  it  may  be,  of  course,  that  the  said  desire 
is  instinctive  and  inherent  rather  than  artificial  and 
acquired.  But,  whether  instinctive  or  acquired, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  about  its  evil  results  on  the 
race  in  general;  and  the  duty  of  a  far-sighted  com- 
munity is  to  control,  as  far  as  possible,  such  instincts 

229 


SOCIALISM  AND   THE  GREAT  STATE 

as  are  dangerous  to  its  health  and  progress  by  the 
provision  of  an  adequate  system  of  check  and  counter- 
balance. Human  nature,  unfortunately,  tends  to 
despise  and  take  pleasure  in  subjecting  its  economic 
as  well  as  its  intellectual  inferiors;  thus,  with  the 
removal  of  general  economic  disability,  it  is  more 
than  possible  that  the  mascuHne  estimate  of,  and 
consideration  for,  woman  will  rise  to  a  higher  level. 
So  far  as  I  can  make  out  there  are  few  grounds  for 
the  supposition  that  the  sex  instinct  in  man  is  so 
faint  as  to  run  serious  risk  of  extinction  through  loss 
of  contempt  for  its  object;  but,  even  in  the  rather 
unlikely  event  of  a  considerable  diminution  in 
woman's  power  of  sex  attraction,  society  in  general 
would  have  no  right  of  complaint  against  her.  On 
the  contrary,  society  in  general  owes  her  a  heavy 
debt  for  the  sacrifice  of  all  those  qualities  and  pos- 
sibilities of  her  life  which,  according  to  its  narrow 
judgment,  interfered  with  her  primary  duty  of 
attracting  the  opposite  sex. 

I  have  not  the  faintest  doubt  that  the  motive 
power  underlying  the  present  and  growing  revolt 
of  woman  against  her  traditional  conditions  of  en- 
vironment is  the  strengthening  consciousness  of  her 
own  degradation — a  degradation  which  is  the  direct 
result  of  her  environment,  the  direct  result  of  gen- 
erations of  cramped  intellectuality  and  concentra- 
tion of  all  powers  of  mind  and  body  upon  sexual 
attraction  and  child-bearing.  The  usual  justifica- 
tion for  a  state  of  things  which  has  resulted  in  the 

230 


WOMEN   IN   THE  GREAT  STATE 

undesirable  inferiority  of  woman  to  man,  in  mind 
as  well  as  in  body,  is  the  welfare  of  the  race.  (In 
this  connection  one  concludes  that  the  word  "race" 
is  used  to  denote  only  the  masculine  half  of  the 
species.)  The  welfare  of  the  race,  we  are  given  to 
understand,  demands  that  a  woman  shall  live  only 
through  and  by  her  husband  and  her  children;  the 
sacrifice  to  them  of  all  her  other  interests  and  ener- 
gies is  a  sacrifice  demanded  of  her  by  Nature  in 
the  interests  of  the  species.  ...  It  is  obvious  that 
Nature  does  demand  a  sacrifice  from  the  mothers 
of  the  race;  the  sacrifice  of  physical  suffering;  but, 
with  regard  to  the  other  disabilities  imposed  upon 
her,  there  are  two  or  three  questions  which  woman 
is  beginning  to  ask,  and  to  which  she  has  a  right  to 
demand  plain  answers.  They  run  something  like 
this : 

How  far  has  Society  the  right  to  increase  the  bur- 
den that  Nature  has  laid  on  her? 

How  far  has  Society  the  right,  hitherto  exercised, 
to  insist  on  a  training  and  environment  which  en- 
courages bodily  weakness  and  moral  and  intel- 
lectual dependence  in  women? 

Is  it  possible  to  enfeeble  one-half  of  the  race  and 
leave  the  other  half  free  to  fulfil  its  destiny  of 
progress,  or  does  man  born  of  woman  have  to  share 
in  the  end  the  degradation  he  has  allotted  to  oth- 
ers? 

Roughly  speaking,  it  is  expediency  that  will  an- 
swer in  the  end.     If,  in  the  long  run,  it  be  proved 

231 


SOCIALISM  AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

that  the  race  cannot  get  on  without  sacrificing  in 
the  process  the  individuaHty  and  independence  of 
its  women,  without  crushing  them  into  one  mould, 
without  confining  their  energies  to  one  channel — 
then  in  the  long  run  the  race  will  have  to  insist  in 
the  future,  as  it  has  insisted  in  the  past,  on  the  de- 
pendence mental,  moral,  and  physical,  on  the 
virtual  subjection  of  its  women.  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  be  proved  and  reaHsed  —  as  the  modern 
feminist  beHeves  that  it  will  be  proved  and  realised 
— that  woman,  as  an  integral  part  of  the  species, 
cannot  be  brutalised  and  retarded  in  her  personal 
development  without,  in  her  turn,  brutalising  and 
retarding  Society  in  general;  that  the  excessive 
sacrifice  demanded  of  her  is  not  paid  by  herself 
alone,  but  that  her  consequent  inferiority  reacts 
upon  the  son  of  woman  who  desires  and  encourages  it ; 
that  the  consistent  poHcy  of  regarding  her  as  nothing 
but  the  breeding  factor  of  the  race  has  actually  im- 
paired her  value  as  the  breeding  factor  of  the  race — 
then  it  will  be  manifestly  the  interest  as  well  as  the 
duty  of  Society  in  general  to  reconsider  its  attitude 
towards  woman  and  seek  not  to  increase  but  to  allevi- 
ate and  counteract  the  burden  of  weakness  laid  on 
her  by  Nature.  If  it  be  proved  to  the  satisfaction  of 
Society  that  woman  as  a  parasite  condemned  to  live 
by  sexual  attraction,  by  marriage  and  prostitution, 
is  a  source,  not  of  strength,  but  of  weakness  to  the 
State,  not  of  strength,  but  of  weakness  to  the  race, 
Society,  as  a  matter  of  course,  will  do  all  in  its 

232 


WOMEN   IN   THE   GREAT  STATE 

power  to  discourage  parasitism  and  encourage  in- 
dependence in  women.  For  the  simple  reason  that, 
in  casting  up  its  accounts,  it  will  have  discovered 
how  high  a  price  it  has  paid  for  sex  dominance,  on 
one  hand,  and  sex  subjection,  on  the  other — how 
high  a  price  in  blood  and  brain  and  money  and  hope- 
less confusion  of  issues. 

Let  me  condense,  then,  into  as  few  words  as  possible 
the  root  principles  which  I  conceive  will  actuate  the 
Great  State  in  its  endeavours  to  deal  justly  with 
women  as  a  class. 

1.  Having  recognised  parasitism  as  an  evil,  the 
Great  State  will  discourage  that  form  of  feminine 
parasitism  which  gains  a  livelihood  through  the 
exercise  of  sexual  attraction.  That  is  to  say,  it 
will  render  it  unnecessary  for  any  woman  to  earn 
her  livelihood  by  means  of  her  powers  of  sexual 
attraction. 

2.  Having  recognised  women  as  citizens  and  in- 
dividuals— with  a  primary  instead  of  secondary  ex- 
istence, a  place  in  the  world  as  well  as  in  the  house — 
the  Great  State  will  permit  and  encourage  them  to 
employ  their  energies  and  abilities  in  every  direc- 
tion in  which  they  desire  to  employ  such  energies 
and  abilities.  That  is  to  say,  it  will  throw  open  to 
them  every  department  of  work  at  which  they  desire 
and  can  prove  their  fitness  to  occupy  themselves; 
thereby  insuring,  so  far  as  it  is  humanly  possible 
to  insure,  that  marriage  shall  not  be  made  by 
women,   and   children   brought   into  the  world  by 

233 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

them,  merely  because  there  is  nothing  else  for 
women  to  do  but  make  marriages  and  bear  children. 
The  Great  State,  in  short,  will  hold  it  better  that  a 
woman  whose  tastes  do  not  lie  in  the  direction  of 
maternity  should  be  a  good  spinster  instead  of  an 
indifferent  mother. 

It  may  be  urged  that  from  my  point  of  view  the 
Great  State  is  an  institution  for  the  promotion  of 
the  celibate  life  and  the  more  or  less  rapid  extinction 
of  the  race.  To  which  I  can  only  reply  that  mar- 
riage, as  it  affects  one  party  to  the  contract — man — 
has  existed  for  a  considerable  period  of  time  as  a 
purely  voluntary  institution,  and  that  it  does  not 
appear  to  be  any  less  popular  with  him  on  that 
account.  I  fail  to  see,  therefore,  why  the  modifi- 
cation of  the  compulsory  character  of  the  institution, 
as  it  affects  the  other  party  to  the  contract — woman 
— should  make  it  any  less  popular  with  her.  Unless, 
indeed,  and  in  spite  of  all  that  has  been  sung  and 
said  and  written  about  woman's  love  and  need  of 
motherhood,  the  sex  instinct  in  us  is  so  feeble  a 
thing  that  it  will  only  work  on  compulsion — the 
pressure  of  hunger,  the  lack  of  other  occupation  or 
interest.  ...  If  that  should  turn  out  to  be  the  case, 
I  admit  with  all  frankness  that  I  see  no  particular 
harm  in  leaving  the  sex  and  maternal  instinct  in 
woman  to  die  out  of  its  own  feebleness,  to  perish 
in  its  own  inertness;  but,  speaking  personally,  I  see 
no  reason  to  suppose  that  so  the  world's  troubles 
will  shortly  be  brought  to  end. 

234 


WOMEN   IN  THE   GREAT  STATE 

If  I  refrain  from  prophecy  concerning  the  par- 
ticular direction  in  which  the  influence  of  women 
who  have  attained  to  complete  recognition  as  citi- 
zens and  individuals  will  make  itself  felt  in  the  State 
of  the  future,  it  is,  honestly,  because  I  find  such 
prophecy  not  merely  difficult,  but  impossible.  There 
are  certain  things  it  is  fairly  safe  to  say:  as,  for  in- 
stance, that  women  in  the  main  will  always  concern 
themselves  intimately  with  such  legislation  as  affects 
the  conditions  of  motherhood  and  the  health  and 
education  of  children.  But  the  point  of  view  from 
which  the  absolutely  free  woman  will  approach 
legislation  affecting  the  condition  of  motherhood  and 
the  health  and  education  of  children  is  a  point  of 
view  at  present  non-existent,  or,  at  best,  only 
struggling  into  being.  Enactments  framed  for  the 
protection  of  workers  at  a  compulsory  trade — as 
marriage  still  is  to  a  great  extent,  for  women — will 
necessarily  be  very  different  in  character  from  enact- 
ments framed  to  suit  or  improve  the  conditions  of 
workers  who  have  a  wide  field  of  occupation  and 
livelihood  to  choose  from.  It  is  quite  within  the 
bounds  of  possibility  that  workers  with  a  wide  field 
of  occupation  and  livelihood  to  choose  from  might 
be  unable  to  see  why  conjugal  affection  should  be 
interpreted  as  a  desire  to  enter  domestic  service 
without  wages.  It  is  quite  within  the  bounds  of 
possibility  that  they  might  be  unable  to  see  any 
necessary  connection  between  conjugal  affection  and 
domestic  service,  between  the  frying  of  bacon  and 

235 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE    GREAT  STATE 

the  bearing  of  the  future  citizen;  and  that,  regard- 
ing domestic  service  and  conjugal  affection  as  en- 
tirely separate  departments  of  human  life  and  effort, 
they  would  draw  a  sharp  line  of  distinction  and 
division  between  housekeeping  and  marital  love.  .  .  . 
The  above  is  not  intended  as  a  prophecy;  it  is  a 
suggestion  merely,  a  simple  example  of  an  every-day 
problem  which  has  not  yet  been  approached  by 
women  sufficiently  independent  in  mind  and  in 
pocket  to  attempt  their  own  solution  of  it.  It  may 
be  that,  when  such  women  do  attempt  it,  their  solu- 
tion thereof  will  be  the  present,  or  masculine,  solu- 
tion; but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  may  not.  .  .  .  The 
only  thing  we  know  with  certainty  concerning  the 
attitude  of  the  human  race  towards  housework  is 
that  men  dislike  it.  Women,  if  asked,  might  be  of 
the  same  opinion.  So  far  they  have  not  been  asked. 
In  the  same  way  we  can  surmise  with  safety  that 
the  present  terms  of  the  contract  of  marriage  will 
undergo  considerable  modification;  but  it  would  be 
rash  to  attempt  an  indication  of  the  precise  nature 
of  such  modification.  A  bargain  struck  between 
economic  and  social  equals  who  desire  to  unite  their 
fives  will,  of  necessity,  be  an  entirely  different  affair 
from  a  bargain  struck,  as  at  present,  between  a 
member  of  a  superior  male  class  and  a  member  of  an 
inferior  female  class.  Further,  the  requirements  of 
a  woman  who  merely  desires  a  husband  will  differ  to 
a  considerable  extent  from  the  requirements  of  the 
woman  who  is  endeavouring  to  secure  not  only  a 

236 


WOMEN   IN   THE  GREAT  STATE 

husband,  but  a  means  of  livelihood,  a  home  or  a 
refuge  from  the  despised  estate  of  spinsterhood. 
For  both  parties  to  the  contract  the  situation  will 
be  simplified  enormously;  between  them  will  lie 
the  clear  issue — under  present  conditions  obscured — 
of  mating  and  the  rearing  of  children.  .  .  .  There 
will  be  a  foundation  to  build  upon;  rock-bottom 
to  work  from. 

If  I  have  expressed  my  meaning  with  any  degree 
of  clearness  it  will  be  understood  that  I  consider  the 
best  service  the  Great  State  can  render  to  its  women 
will  be  to  allow  them  to  find  their  own  level.  That 
is  to  say,  to  allow  them  to  discover  by  means  of 
education  and  experiment  the  precise  point  at  which 
the  real  disabilities  imposed  on  them  by  Nature  can 
be  distinguished  from  the  traditional  and  artificial 
disabilities  imposed  on  them  by  Society.  And  in 
this  connection  nothing  should  be  assumed,  nothing 
should  be  taken  for  granted. 

It  should  not  be  assumed,  for  instance,  that 
because  a  woman  has  married  a  husband  and  borne 
him  children  her  entire  existence — her  hopes  and 
her  pleasures  and  ambitions — are  bound  up  in  wife- 
hood and  maternity.  Any  more  than  it  should  be 
assumed  that  a  wife  and  mother  has  an  unaccount- 
able, instinctive  preference  for  forms  of  labour 
heartily  disliked  by  other  persons;  forms  of  labour 
which  bring  her  in  neither  personal  advancement 
nor  monetary  reward.     It  should  not  be  assumed 

16  237 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

that  the  longing  for  and  love  of  children  exists  in 
every  woman ;  it  should  not  be  assumed  that  it  is  un- 
natural or  abnormal  for  a  woman  to  vary  from  the 
accepted  type.  It  should  not  be  assumed  that 
woman  is  a  childlike  barbarian  guided  only  by  her 
instincts,  by  the  promptings  of  sex  and  maternity.  .  .  . 
All  these  assumptions,  of  course,  may  be  perfectly 
correct;  but,  under  present  conditions  and  without 
experience  and  experiment,  I  maintain  that  we  have 
no  right  to  regard  them  as  anything  but  speculative 
guesses.  Under  present,  and  still  more  under  past 
conditions  all  these  assumptions,  these  speculative 
guesses,  have  not  only  been  acted  upon  by  the 
masculine  half  of  humanity,  but  instilled,  from  its 
infancy  upwards,  into  the  feminine  half  of  the  race. 
With  the  result  that  a  good  many  of  us  are  in  the  hu- 
miliating position  of  not  knowing  what  it  is  we  want. 
All  we  do  know  is  that,  for  some  mysterious  reason, 
we  don't  want  the  things  we  are  told  we  ought  to 
want,  don't  like  the  things  we  are  told  we  ought  to 
like.  .  .  .  And  the  Great  State  will  have  to  give  us 
leave  to  find  ourselves. 

It  is  possible  that  the  process  of  finding  ourselves 
may  take  time.  We  have  the  accumulation  of  gen- 
erations of  artificiality  to  throw  off — of  artificially 
induced  virtues  as  well  as  of  artificially  induced  vices. 
Submission  and  humility  are  not  always  compatible 
with  self-respect;  complete  absorption  in  the  life  of 
another  with  progress  in  "fine  thinking."  "Love 
and  fine  thinking,"  one  takes  it,  will  not  always  be 

238 


WOMEN   IN  THE   GREAT  STATE 

demanded,  as  now,  in  separate  consignments  from 
the  separate  sexes.  The  woman's  point  of  view  will 
be  asked  for,  not  snubbed  out  of  existence,  by  the 
social  organism  of  the  future;  hence,  the  woman  will 
have  to  fight  her  way  to  a  point  of  view  essentially 
her  own. 

That  she  will  hate  doing  so  goes  without  saying. 
In  all  ages  man,  in  the  mass,  has  hated  the  trouble 
of  thinking,  has  paid,  implored  others  to  do  his 
thinking  for  him:  and  it  has  never  been  enjoined 
upon  man,  as  it  has  upon  woman,  in  the  mass,  that 
he  had  no  need  to  think,  that  ignorance  was  another 
name  for  virtue.  So  much  and  so  often  has  stupidity 
been  enjoined  upon  us,  and  so  completely  have  we 
obeyed  the  injunction,  that  out  of  our  compliance 
there  has  grown  up  the  legend  that  nature  has 
designed  us  as  creatures  incapable  of  connected 
thought.  It  is  said  and  believed  of  us  that  the 
mental  processes  by  which  we  arrive  at  conclusions 
are  essentially  and  radically  different  from  the  mental 
processes  whereby  the  same  conclusions  are  arrived 
at  by  our  men-folk;  that,  in  short,  we  are  instinctive 
— or,  as  it  is  more  courteously  called,  intuitive — not 
reasoning  beings. 

The  legend  has  this  truth  in  it  that,  in  deference 
to  the  wishes  of  our  men-folk,  we  have  made  small 
use  of  our  reason.  .  .  .  And, that  being  so,  fine  think- 
ing may  not  come  easy  to  us. 

One  of  the  essential  differences  between  the  at- 
titude of  the  Great  State  towards  its  women  and  the 

239 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

corresponding  attitude  of  the  Normal  Social  Life 
will  be  that  the  former  will  permit  and  encourage 
variety,  where  the  other  has  insisted  on  uniformity 
of  type.  So  far  the  atmosphere  of  the  social  organism 
has  been  favourable  to  the  production  of  but  two 
species  of  woman:  the  wife  and  mother,  and  her 
equivalent  outside  the  law.  Custom  and  education 
alike  were  strenuous  and  unceasing  in  their  efforts  to 
run  all  womanhood  into  the  same  mould,  to  make 
all  womanhood  conform  to  the  same  standard  of 
domesticity  and  charm.  (It  is,  by  the  way,  really 
pitiful  to  think  of  the  amount  of  energy  wasted 
th  ough  the  ages  and  still  wasted  by  countless 
women  in  the  vain  endeavour  to  make  themselves 
what  Nature  never  intended  them  to  be — charming.) 
Any  variation  from  the  above  type  has  usually 
been  received  with  anything  but  a  sympathetic  wel- 
come; on  the  contrary,  its  customary  greeting  was 
a  derisive  hoot.  Woman,  in  fact,  until  our  own  times 
has  been  judged,  measured,  and  condemned  by  a 
prehistoric  standard  requiring  of  her  uniformity  of 
temperament,  taste,  and  attainment,  a  standard 
which  has  not  been  applied  to  man  since  the  days 
when  the  entire  male  population  of  the  earth  earned 
its  meat  by  the  only  trade  it  knew — the  chase.  It 
is  a  curious  proof  of  persistent  masculine  failure  to 
recognise  in  woman  a  humanity  as  complete  as  his 
own,  this  absolute  refusal  of  man  (while  himself 
progressing  along  the  lines  of  differentiation  marked 
out  for  him  by  Nature,  becoming  agriculturist  and 

240 


WOMEN   IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

townsman  and  a  thousand  things  besides)  to  per- 
ceive in  his  partner  and  dependant  any  fitness  or 
capacity  save  fitness  and  capacity  for  the  two  oc- 
cupations of  sexual  attraction  and  homekeeping. 
Had  he  ever  realised  that  his  partner  and  dependant 
was  indeed  as  human  and  complete  as  himself,  it 
would  surely  have  been  borne  in  upon  him  that 
nature  and  civilisation  would  work  in  her  humanity 
after  much  the  same  fashion  as  they  worked  in  his — 
by  the  production  of  numerous  variations  from  an 
original  uniform  type.  Instead,  therefore,  of  as- 
suming that  all  variations  from  the  accepted  idea 
of  woman  were  unnatural,  freakish,  and  out  of  place 
in  the  scheme  of  Nature,  he  would  have  realised  that 
the  really  unnatural  and  abnormal  feature  about 
womanhood  in  general  was  its  unfortunate  lack  of 
such  variation,  the  artificially  unhealthy  uniform- 
ity of  type  produced  by  generations  of  economic 
pressure  and  restriction  of  opportunity.  After  all,  it 
is  only  when  the  normal  number  of  variations  from 
the  type  are  permitted  to  appear  that  you  can  say 
with  certainty  what  the  type  really  is  and  to  what 
extent  particular  qualities  are  essentially  charac- 
teristic of  it. 

There  are,  it  seems  to  me,  good  grounds  for  be- 
lieving that  the  common  basis  of  human  character 
is  very  much  wider  than  has  hitherto  been  supposed. 
Given  the  same  influence  and  environment,  the 
customary  difference  between  the  desires  and  be- 
haviour  of   the   sexes   lessens   perceptibly,    swiftly, 

241 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

and  automatically,  thereby  often  proving  itself  to 
be  more  customary  than  natural.  Warfare,  for 
instance,  has  seldom  been  looked  upon  as  a  feminine 
business;  on  the  contrary  woman  has  UvSually  been 
shielded  from  contact  with  actual  bloodshed.  Yet, 
over  and  over  again,  when  brought  into  contact 
with  actual  bloodshed  woman  has  proved  that  such 
contact  acts  upon  her  in  much  the  same  fashion 
as  it  does  upon  man ;  that  the  hardships  of  a  siege 
or  the  fury  of  hand-to-hand  fighting  produce  in  her 
symptoms  of  wrath,  desperation,  and  hatred  which 
are  in  no  way  essentially  different  from  the  cor- 
responding symptoms  in  her  brethren.  Again,  it 
has  been  assumed  that  the  power  of  combination 
for  a  common  purpose  is  a  characteristic  essentially 
male;  those  who  took  the  assumption  for  granted 
forgetting  that  it  was  the  military  tradition — the 
need  for  standing  together  in  the  face  of  a  common 
enemy — that  first  taught  combination  to  men.  The 
political  tradition  was  but  the  same  lesson  repeated 
in  other  terms — a  lesson  for  men  only;  and  so  was 
the  male  industrial  system,  the  habit  of  working 
together  in  numbers.  .  .  .  Only  on  comparatively 
rare  occasions  in  the  history  of  the  world  has  war- 
fare or  political  activity  entered  directly  into  the 
lives  of  women  except  in  so  far  as  they  suffered  or 
advantaged  passively  from  the  effects  of  both. 
While  the  home  industries  at  which  for  centuries 
the  great  majority  of  women  were  accustomed  to 
earn    their    keep,    if    little    else — brewing,    baking, 

242 


WOMEN   IN   THE   GREAT   STATE 

spinning,  child-tending,  domestic  labour  of  every 
sort  and  kind — were,  in  the  very  nature  of  things, 
isolated  industries,  carried  on  in  separate  house- 
holds on  a  small  scale  and  without  co-operation  or 
combination.  The  home  industry  kept  its  workers 
apart;  it  did  not  bring  cooks,  housewives,  nurses, 
and  weavers  together  in  their  tens  and  their  hundreds 
and  unite  them  by  the  tie  of  a  common  interest  in 
their  common  labour.  It  was  not  until  many  of 
these  isolated  industries  began  to  dwindle  and 
vanish  with  the  general  introduction  of  machinery 
and  consequent  reorganisation  and  centralisation  of 
the  means  of  production;  not  until  the  home  ceased 
to  be  a  self  -  supporting  institution  and  became 
merely  a  place  to  dwell  in,  that  women  began  to 
learn,  outside  the  home,  the  lesson  of  combination 
they  had  never  learned  inside  it.  When  the  weaving 
trade,  the  spinning  trade,  the  brewing  trade,  the 
pickling  trade,  and  half  a  dozen  others  had  re- 
moved themselves  bodily  from  the  kitchen  or 
parlour  to  the  factory,  drawing  after  them  inevi- 
tably the  workers  who  depended  on  those  trades 
for  a  living,  then,  practically  for  the  first  time, 
women  were  steadily  and  systematically  thrown 
together  in  large  numbers,  with  the  tie  of  a  common 
work  between  them,  with  similar  aims  and  hard- 
ships, and  similar  causes  of  resentment. 

When  we  remember  how  very  recent  is  the  intro- 
duction of  women  to  the  organised  collective  life 
of  the  community,  it  seems  remarkable  that  they 

243 


SOCIALISM   AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

have  so  quickly  responded  to  its  appeal  and  assimi- 
lated its  influence.  Collective  labour  outside  the 
narrow  confines  of  the  home  is  already  working 
upon  them  exactly  as  it  has  worked  upon  their 
brothers;  informing  them  with  the  spirit  and  power 
of  combination  and  a  sense  of  class,  as  distinct  from 
individual  and  family,  need.  The  insistent  and 
growing  demand  of  women  for  a  share  in  political 
power  is  the  direct  and  inevitable  result  of  the 
revolution  in  industrial  conditions  which  has  driven 
them  out  of  the  isolation  of  their  homes  to  earn  their 
bread  and  rub  shoulders  with  others  in  the  process. 
To  take  another  instance  of  a  human  quality 
hitherto  considered  masculine:  not  the  least  in- 
teresting feature  of  the  Woman  Suffrage  movement 
in  England  is  the  fact  that  the  excitement  of  politi- 
cal struggle  has  produced  in  a  certain  type  of  healthy 
young  woman  exactly  the  effect  which  it  often  pro- 
duces in  a  similar  type  of  healthy  young  man — the 
excited  mental  condition  which  expresses  itself  in 
acts  of  rowdyism.  I  would  not  be  understood  to 
mean  that  all  the  women  who,  of  late  years,  have 
taken  part  in  what  are  known  as  militant  suffrage 
demonstrations  belong  to  the  rowdy  type;  on  the 
contrary,  I  should  say  that  the  proportion  was  small 
indeed  compared  with  the  numbers  of  those  who  are 
actuated  by  a  sense  of  duty,  self-sacrifice,  and 
loyalty.  But  no  one  who  has  mingled  observantly 
with  the  demonstrators  can  doubt  that  the  rowdy 
type  amongst  women  exists — the  girl  who,  like  her 

244 


WOMEN   IN   THE  GREAT  STATE 

brother,  is  at  the  same  time  thrilled  and  amused  by 
the  idea  of  actual  conflict  and  whose  high  spirits  find 
natural  vent  in  noise  and  vehement  action,  usually 
destructive.  I  see  no  reason  why  the  fact  should  be 
denied :  first,  because  it  is  a  fact ;  secondly,  because 
it  does  not  seem  to  me  a  fact  to  be  greatly  ashamed 
of.  A  touch  of  rowdyism  has  always  been  taken  for 
granted  in  the  youthful  human  male;  the  militant 
suffrage  movement  has  shown  us  that  we  must  hence- 
forth take  it  for  granted  in  the  youthful  human 
female^and  thereby  demonstrated  that  a  character- 
istic hitherto  deemed  the  pecuHar  property  of  the 
male  was  only  awaiting  an  opportunity  to  reveal 
itself  as  the  common  possession  of  both  sexes. 

If  I  am  right  in  supposing  that  the  present  un- 
doubted superiority  of  man  over  woman  is  less  a 
sex  than  a  class  superiority,  and  that  the  essential 
differences  between  naturally  developed  man  and 
naturally  developed  woman  are  fewer  than  is  com- 
monly supposed,  it  follows  that  those  legislative 
enactments  in  the  State  of  the  future  which  affect 
women  as  a  class  apart  will  be  comparatively  few 
in  number.  Motherhood,  of  course,  will  always 
place  a  woman  in  a  class  apart  for  a  certain  length 
of  time,  a  class  demanding  special  provision  and 
undertaking  special  responsibilities.  But  in  deal- 
ing with  women  in  general  the  State  of  the  future 
will  be  mindful  of  the  fact  that  it  is  deahng  with  a 
class  whose  interests  are  varied  and  multiple;  it 
will  not  assume  that  all  the  members  of  that  class 

245 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

are  or  ought  to  be  in  a  perpetual  condition  of  preg- 
nancy, and  try  to  regulate  their  existence  accordingly. 

It  is,  of  course,  one  thing  to  give  freedom;  it  is 
quite  another  to  induce  the  recipients  of  freedom 
to  make  use  of  it.  I  believe  that  the  conscience  of 
Society  will  insist  in  the  very  near  future  that 
woman  shall  be  granted  every  opportunity  of  prov- 
ing herself  the  equal  of  her  brother  in  fact  as  well 
as  in  name;  it  will  rest  with  herself,  therefore, 
whether  she  takes  full  advantage  of  such  opportunity. 
The  real  difficulty  in  her  way,  I  take  it,  will  be  at 
first  the  weakness  and  instability  of  purpose  -com- 
mon to  every  class  that  has  been  accustomed  to 
exist  without  personal  responsibility  and  need  for 
independent  thinking.  It  is  because  they  have 
been  composed  of  such  a  class  that  newly  enfran- 
chised democracies  have  so  often  proved  lacking  in 
intelligent  capacity  for  self-government.  They  have 
failed  because  they  were  stupid;  because  the  en- 
lightened democracy  has  so  far  scarcely  existed 
outside  an  election  address. 

As  I  have  pointed  out,  no  other  section  of  the  com- 
munity has  been  encouraged  to  be  stupid  to  the  same 
extent  as  women.  No  influence  could  have  been 
better  calculated  to  weaken  moral  fibre  in  a  human 
being  than  the  long-accepted  tradition — accepted 
even  by  herself — that  woman  apart  from  man  was 
a  creature  half  alive ;  that,  as  the  cant  phrase  goes, 
she  was  "incomplete."  You  cannot  expect  inde- 
pendence of  judgment  and  sense  of  responsibility 

246 


WOMEN   IN   THE   GREAT  STATE 

from  a  being  to  whom  you  deny  the  elementary  right 
and  fact  of  separate,  independent  existence. 

Women,  one  imagines,  wiU  attain  to  liberty  of 
thought  and  action  in  much  the  same  way  as  other 
subjugated  classes  have  attained  and  are  attaining 
it — by  degrees  more  or  less  slow,  and  after  passing 
through  what  seems  to  be  the  inevitable  process  of 
revolting  against  one  tyranny  only  to  put  another 
in  its  place.  In  those  long  habituated  to  submission 
and  control  the  habit  of  dependence  is,  as  a  rule,  too 
deeply  rooted  to  be  swept  away  by  the  first  uprush 
of  the  desire  for  freedom;  and,  having  overthrown 
one  idol,  decrepit  and  despised,  they  are  as  apt  as  not 
to  set  a  new  one  in  its  place — one  rigid  dogma  for 
another,  a  new  narrow  loyalty  in  place  of  an  old 
blind  one,  a  sovereign  people  in  place  of  a  sovereign 
lord.  .  .  .  Watching  the  process  of  seemingly  retro- 
grade stumbling,  the  hearts  of  many  who  desired 
freedom  for  others  as  well  as  for  themselves  have 
grown  sick  even  to  despair  of  their  ideal.  A  despair 
not  justified,  save  in  the  case  of  those  who  have  never 
revolted  at  all.  For  the  habit  of  revolt  against  in- 
justice grows,  like  other  habits,  by  the  exercise 
thereof;  so  that  those  who  have  overthrown  one 
despotism,  material  or  spiritual,  will,  in  the  end, 
remember  a  precedent  and  turn  on  the  oppressor 
themselves  have  set  up  in  its  stead.  It  is  the  first 
forward  step,  the  precedent  for  revolt,  in  a  subject 
class  that  counts;  since  what  has  been  done  before 
can  always  be  done  again. 

247 


THE   ARTIST    IN    THE    GREAT    STATE 

BY    ROGER   FRY 


IX 

THE   ARTIST   IN   THE   GREAT   STATE 

I  AM  not  a  Socialist,  as  I  understand  that  word,  nor 
can  I  pretend  to  have  worked  out  those  complex  esti- 
mates of  economic  possibility  which  are  needed  before 
one  can  indorse  the  hopeful  forecasts  of  Lady  Warwick, 
Mr.  Money,  and  Mr.  Wells.  What  I  propose  to  do 
here  is  first  to  discuss  what  effect  plutocracy,  such  as 
it  is  to-day,  has  had  of  late,  and  is  likely  to  have  in 
the  near  future,  upon  one  of  the  things  which  I  should 
like  to  imagine  continuing  upon  our  planet — namely, 
art.  And  then  briefly  to  prognosticate  its  chances 
under  such  a  regime  as  my  colleagues  have  sketched. 

As  I  understand  it,  art  is  one  of  the  chief  organs  of 
what,  for  want  of  a  better  word,  I  must  call  the 
spiritual  life.  It  both  stimulates  and  controls  those 
indefinable  overtones  of  the  material  life  of  man 
which  all  of  us  at  moments  feel  to  have  a  quality 
of  permanence  and  reality  that  does  not  belong  to 
the  rest  of  our  experience.  Nature  demands  with 
no  uncertain  voice  that  the  physical  needs  of  the 
body  shall  be  satisfied  first ;  but  we  feel  that  our  real 
human  life  only  begins  at  the  point  where  that  is 
accomplished,   that   the   man   who   works  at  some 

251 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

uncreative  and  uncongenial  toil  merely  to  earn 
enough  food  to  enable  him  to  continue  to  work  has 
not,  properly  speaking,  a  human  life  at  all. 

It  is  the  argument  of  commercialism,  as  it  once 
was  of  aristocracy,  that  the  accumulation  of  surplus 
wealth  in  a  few  hands  enables  this  spiritual  life  to 
maintain  its  existence,  that  no  really  valuable  or 
useless  work  (for  from  this  point  of  view  only  useless 
work  has  value)  could  exist  in  the  community  with- 
out such  accumulations  of  wealth.  The  argument 
has  been  employed  for  the  disinterested  work  of 
scientific  research.  A  doctor  of  naturally  liberal 
and  generous  impulses  told  me  that  he  was  becoming 
a  reactionary  simply  because  he  feared  that  public 
bodies  would  never  give  the  money  necessary  for 
research  with  anything  like  the  same  generosity  as 
is  now  shown  by  the  great  plutocrats.  But  Sir  Ray 
Lankester  does  not  find  that  generosity  sufficient, 
and  is  prepared  at  least  to  consider  a  State  more 
ample-spirited. 

The  situation  as  regards  art  and  as  regards  the 
disinterested  love  of  truth  is  so  similar  that  we 
might  expect  this  argument  in  favour  of  a  plutocratic 
social  order  to  hold  equally  well  for  both  art  and 
science,  and  that  the  artist  would  be  a  fervent 
upholder  of  the  present  system.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  more  representative  artists  have  rarely  been 
such,  and  not  a  few,  though  working  their  life  long 
for  the  plutocracy,  have  been  vehement  Socialists. 

Despairing  of  the  conditions  due  to  modern  com- 

252 


THE   ARTIST  IN   THE   GREAT  STATE 

mercialism,  it  is  not  unnatural  that  lovers  of  beauty- 
should  look  back  with  nostalgia  to  the  age  when 
society  was  controlled  by  a  landed  aristocracy.  I 
believe,  however,  that  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
encouragement  of  great  creative  art  there  is  not  much 
difference  between  an  aristocracy  and  a  plutocracy. 
The  aristocrat  usually  had  taste,  the  plutocrat  fre- 
quently has  not.  Now  taste  is  of  two  kinds,  the  first 
consisting  in  the  negative  avoidance  of  all  that  is  ill- 
considered  and  discordant,  the  other  positive  and  a 
by-product ;  it  is  that  harmony  which  always  results 
from  the  expression  of  intense  and  disinterested 
emotion.  The  aristocrat,  by  means  of  his  good  taste 
of  the  negative  kind,  was  able  to  come  to  terms  with 
the  artist;  the  plutocrat  has  not.  But  both  alike 
desire  to  buy  something  which  is  incommensurate 
with  money.  Both  want  art  to  be  a  background  to 
their  radiant  self -consciousness.  They  want  to  buy 
beauty  as  they  want  to  buy  love;  and  the  painter, 
picture-dealer,  and  the  pander  try  perennially  to  per- 
suade them  that  it  is  possible.  But  living  beauty 
cannot  be  bought ;  it  must  be  won.  I  have  said  that 
the  aristocrat,  by  his  taste,  by  his  feeling  for  the  acci- 
dentals of  beauty,  did  manage  to  get  on  to  some 
kind  of  terms  with  the  artist.  Hence  the  art  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  an  art  that  is  prone  before  the 
distinguished  patron,  subtly  and  deliciously  flatter- 
ing and  yet  always  fine.  In  contrast  to  that  the  art 
of  the  nineteenth  century  is  coarse,  turbulent,  clumsy. 
It  marks  the  beginning  of  a  revolt.  The  artist  just 
17  253 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

managed  to  let  himself  be  coaxed  and  cajoled  by  the 
aristocrat,  but  when  the  aristocratic  was  succeeded  by 
the  plutocratic  patron  with  less  conciliatory  manners 
and  no  taste,  the  artist  rebelled;  and  the  history  of 
art  in  the  nineteenth  century  is  the  history  of  a  band 
of  heroic  Ishmaelites,  with  no  secure  place  in  the 
social  system,  with  nothing  to  support  them  in  the 
unequal  struggle  but  a  dim  sense  of  a  new  idea,  the 
idea  of  the  freedom  of  art  from  all  trammels  and 
tyrannies. 

The  place  that  the  artists  left  vacant  at  the  plu- 
tocrat's table  had  to  be  filled,  and  it  was  filled  by  a 
race  new  in  the  history  of  the  world,  a  race  for  whom 
no  name  has  yet  been  found,  a  race  of  pseudo- 
artists.  As  the  prostitute  professes  to  sell  love,  so 
these  gentlemen  professed  to  sell  beauty,  and  they 
and  their  patrons  rollicked  good-humouredly  through 
the  Victorian  era.  They  adopted  the  name  and  some- 
thing of  the  manner  of  artists;  they  intercepted 
not  only  the  money,  but  the  titles  and  fame  and 
glory  which  were  intended  for  those  whom  they  had 
supplanted.  But,  while  they  were  yet  feasting,  there 
came  an  event  which  seemed  at  the  time  of  no  im- 
portance, but  which  was  destined  to  change  ulti- 
mately the  face  of  things,  the  exhibition  of  ancient 
art  at  Manchester  in  1857.  And  with  this  came 
Ruskin's  address  on  the  Political  Economy  of  Art,  a 
work  which  surprises  by  its  prophetic  foresight  when 
we  read  it  half  a  century  later.  These  two  things 
were  the  Mene  Tekel  of  the  orgy  of  Victorian  Phil- 

254 


THE   ARTIST   IN   THE   GREAT   STATE 

istinism.  The  plutocrat  saw  through  the  decep- 
tion; it  was  not  beauty  the  pseudo-artist  sold  him, 
any  more  than  it  was  love  which  the  prostitute  gave. 
He  turned  from  it  in  disgust  and  decided  that  the 
only  beauty  he  could  buy  was  the  dead  beauty  of 
the  past.  Thereupon  set  in  the  worship  of  patine 
and  the  age  of  forgery  and  the  detection  of  forgery. 
I  once  remarked  to  a  rich  man  that  a  statue  by  Ro- 
din might  be  worthy  even  of  his  collection.  He  re- 
plied, "Show  me  a  Rodin  with  the  patine  of  the 
fifteenth  century,  and  I  will  buy  it." 

Patine,  then,  the  adventitious  material  beauty 
which  age  alone  can  give,  has  come  to  be  the  object 
of  a  reverence  greater  than  that  devoted  to  the  idea 
which  is  enshrined  within  the  work  of  art.  People 
are  right  to  admire  patine.  Nothing  is  more  beau- 
tiful than  gilded  bronze  of  which  time  has  taken 
toll  until  it  is  nothing  but  a  faded  shimmering 
splendour  over  depths  of  inscrutable  gloom;  noth- 
ing finer  than  the  dull  glow  which  Pentelic  marble 
has  gathered  from  past  centuries  of  sunlight  and 
warm  Mediterranean  breezes.  Patine  is  good,  but 
it  is  a  surface  charm  added  to  the  essential  beauty 
of  expression;  its  beauty  is  literally  skin-deep.  It 
can  never  come  into  being  or  exist  in  or  for  itself; 
no  patine  can  make  a  bad  work  good,  or  the  forgers 
would  be  justified.  It  is  an  adjectival  and  ancillary 
beauty  scarcely  worthy  of  our  prolonged  contem- 
plation. 

There  is  to  the  philosopher  something  pathetic 

25s 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

in  the  Plutocrat's  worship  of  patine.  It  is,  as  it  were, 
a  compensation  for  his  own  want  of  it.  On  himself 
all  the  rough  thumb  and  chisel  marks  of  his  maker — 
and  he  is  self-made — stand  as  yet  unpolished  and 
raw;  but  his  furniture,  at  least,  shall  have  the  dis- 
tinction of  age-long  acquaintance  with  good  manners. 

But  the  net  result  of  all  this  is  that  the  artist  has 
nothing  to  hope  from  the  Plutocrat.  To  him  we 
must  be  grateful  indeed  for  that  brusque  disillusion- 
ment of  the  real  artist,  the  real  artist  who  might 
have  rubbed  along  uneasily  for  yet  another  century 
with  his  predecessor,  the  aristocrat.  Let  us  be 
grateful  to  him  for  this;  but  we  need  not  look  to 
him  for  further  benefits,  and  if  we  decide  to  keep 
him  the  artist  must  be  content  to  be  paid  after  he 
is  dead  and  vicariously  in  the  person  of  an  art- 
dealer.  The  artist  must  be  content  to  look  on  while 
sums  are  given  for  dead  beauty,  the  tenth  part  of 
which,  properly  directed,  would  irrigate  whole  nations 
and  stimulate  once  more  the  production  of  vital 
artistic  expression. 

I  would  not  wish  to  appear  to  blame  the  plutocrat. 
He  has  often  honestly  done  his  best  for  art;  the 
trouble  is  not  of  his  making  more  than  of  the  art- 
ist's, and  the  misunderstanding  between  art  and  com- 
merce is  bound  to  be  complete.  The  artist,  however 
mean  and  avaricious  he  may  appear,  knows  that  he 
cannot  really  sell  himself  for  money  any  more  than 
the  philosopher  or  the  scientific  investigator  can  sell 
himself  for  money.     He  takes  money  in  the  hope 

256 


THE  ARTIST  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

that  he  may  secure  the  opportunity  for  the  free  func- 
tioning of  his  creative  power.  If  the  patron  could 
give  him  that  instead  of  money  he  would  bless  him ; 
but  he  cannot,  and  so  he  tries  to  get  him  to  work  not 
quite  freely  for  money;  and  in  revenge  the  artist 
indulges  in  all  manner  of  insolences,  even  perhaps  in 
sharp  practices,  which  make  the  patron  feel,  with 
some  justification,  that  he  is  the  victim  of  ingrati- 
tude and  wanton  caprice.  It  is  impossible  that  the 
artist  should  work  for  the  plutocrat ;  he  must  work 
for  himself,  because  it  is  only  by  so  doing  that  he 
can  perform  the  function  for  which  he  exists;  it  is 
only  by  working  for  himself  that  he  can  work  for 
mankind. 

If,  then,  the  particular  kind  of  accumulation  of 
surplus  wealth  which  we  call  plutocracy  has  failed, 
as  surely  it  has  signally  failed,  to  stimulate  the 
creative  power  of  the  imagination,  what  disposition 
of  wealth  might  be  conceived  that  would  succeed 
better?  First  of  all,  a  greater  distribution  of 
wealth,  with  a  lower  standard  of  ostentation,  would, 
I  think,  do  a  great  deal  to  improve  things  without 
any  great  change  in  other  conditions.  It  is  not 
enough  known  that  the  patronage  which  really 
counts  to-day  is  exercised  by  quite  small  and  hum- 
ble people.  These  people  with  a  few  hundreds  a 
year  exercise  a  genuine  patronage  by  buying  pictures 
at  ten,  twenty,  or  occasionally  thirty  pounds,  with 
real  insight  and  understanding,  thereby  enabling  the 
young  Ishmaelite  to  live  and  function  from  the  age 

257 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

of  twenty  to  thirty  or  so,  when  perhaps  he  becomes 
known  to  richer  buyers,  those  experienced  spenders 
of  money  who  are  always  more  cautious,  more 
anxious  to  buy  an  investment  than  a  picture.  These 
poor,  inteUigent  first  patrons  to  whom  I  allude  be- 
long mainly  to  the  professional  classes;  they  have 
none  of  the  pretensions  of  the  plutocrat  and  none 
of  his  ambitions.  The  work  of  art  is  not  for  them, 
as  for  him,  a  decorative  backcloth  to  his  stage,  but 
an  idol  and  an  inspiration.  Merely  to  increase  the 
number  and  potency  of  these  people  would  already 
accomplish  much;  and  this  is  to  be  noticed,  that  if 
wealth  were  more  evenly  distributed,  if  no  one  had 
a  great  deal  of  wealth,  those  who  really  cared  for  art 
would  become  the  sole  patrons,  since  for  all  it  would 
be  an  appreciable  sacrifice,  and  for  none  an  impossi- 
bility. The  man  who  only  buys  pictures  when  he 
has  as  many  motor-cars  as  he  can  conceivably  want 
would  drop  out  as  a  patron  altogether. 

But  even  this  would  only  foster  the  minor  and  pri- 
vate arts;  and  what  the  history  of  art  definitely 
elucidates  is  that  the  greatest  art  has  always  been 
communal,  the  expression — ^in  highly  individualised 
ways,  no  doubt — of  common  aspirations  and  ideals. 

Let  us  suppose,  then,  that  society  were  so  arranged 
that  considerable  surplus  wealth  lay  in  the  hands 
of  public  bodies,  both  national  and  local ;  can  we  have 
any  reasonable  hope  that  they  would  show  more 
skill  in  carrying  out  the  delicate  task  of  stimulating 
and  using  the  creative  power  of  the  artist? 

258 


THE   ARTIST  IN   THE  GREAT   STATE 

The  immediate  prospect  is  certainly  not  en- 
couraging. Nothing,  for  instance,  is  more  deplorable 
than  to  watch  the  patronage  of  our  provincial 
museums.  The  gentlemen  who  administer  these 
public  funds  naturally  have  not  realised  so  acutely 
as  private  buyers  the  lesson  so  admirably  taught  at 
Christie's,  that  pseudo  or  Royal-Academic  art  is  a 
bad  investment.  Nor  is  it  better  if  we  turn  to 
national  patronage.  In  Great  Britain,  at  least,  we 
cannot  get  a  postage  stamp  or  a  penny  even  respec- 
tably designed,  much  less  a  public  monument.  In- 
deed, the  tradition  that  all  public  British  art  shall 
be  crassly  mediocre  and  inexpressive  is  so  firmly 
rooted  that  it  seems  to  have  almost  the  prestige  of 
constitutional  precedent.  Nor  will  any  one  who  has 
watched  a  committee  commissioning  a  presentation 
portrait,  or  even  buying  an  old  master,  be  in  danger 
of  taking  too  optimistic  a  view.  With  rare  and 
shining  exceptions,  committees  seem  to  be  at  the 
mercy  of  the  lowest  common  denominator  of  their 
individual  natures,  which  is  dominated  by  fear  of 
criticism;  and  fear  and  its  attendant,  compromise, 
are  bad  masters  of  the  arts. 

Speaking  recently  at  Liverpool,  Mr.  Bernard 
Shaw  placed  the  present  situation  as  regards  public 
art  in  its  true  light.  He  declared  that  the  corrup- 
tion of  taste  and  the  emotional  insincerity  of  the 
mass  of  the  people  had  gone  so  far  that  any  picture 
which  pleased  more  than  ten  per  cent,  of  the  popu- 
lation should  be  immediately  burned.  .  .  . 

259 


SOCIALISM   AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

This,  then,  is  the  fundamental  fact  we  have  to 
face.  And  it  is  this  that  gives  us  pause  when  we 
try  to  construct  any  conceivable  system  of  public 
patronage. 

For  the  modern  artist  puts  the  question  of  any 
socialistic — or,  indeed,  of  any  completely  ordered — 
state  in  its  acutest  form.  He  demands  as  an  es- 
sential to  the  proper  use  of  his  powers  a  freedom 
from  restraint  such  as  no  other  workman  expects. 
He  must  work  when  he  feels  inclined;  he  cannot 
work  to  order.  Hence  his  frequent  quarrels  with 
the  burgher  who  knows  he  has  to  work  when  he  is 
disinclined,  and  cannot  conceive  why  the  artist 
should  not  do  likewise.  The  burgher  watches  the 
artist's  wayward  and  apparently  quite  unmethodical 
activity,  and  envies  his  job.  Now  in  any  Socialistic 
State,  if  certain  men  are  licensed  to  pursue  the 
artistic  calling,  they  are  likely  to  be  regarded  by  the 
other  workers  with  some  envy.  There  may  be  a 
competition  for  such  soft  jobs  among  those  who  are 
naturally  work-shy,  since  it  will  be  evident  that  the 
artist  is  not  called  to  account  in  the  same  way  as 
other  workers. 

If  we  suppose,  as  seems  not  unlikely,  in  view  of 
the  immense  numbers  who  become  artists  in  our 
present  social  state,  that  there  would  be  this  com- 
petition for  the  artistic  work  of  the  community, 
what  methods  would  be  devised  to  select  those  re- 
quired to  fill  the  coveted  posts  ?  Frankly,  the  history 
of  art  in  the  nineteenth  century  makes  us  shudder 

260 


THE  ARTIST   IN   THE   GREAT  STATE 

at  the  results  that  would  follow.  One  scarcely  knows 
whether  they  would  be  worse  if  Bumble  or  the 
academy  were  judge.  We  only  know  that  under  any 
such  conditions  none  of  the  artists  whose  work  has 
ultimately  counted  in  the  spiritual  development  of 
the  race  would  have  been  allowed  to  practise  the 
coveted  profession. 

There  is  in  truth,  as  Ruskin  pointed  out  in  his 
Political  Economy  of  Art,  a  gross  and  wanton  waste 
under  the  present  system.  We  have  thousands  of 
artists  who  are  only  so  by  accident  and  by  name,  on 
the  one  hand,  and  certainly  many — one  cannot  tell 
how  many — who  have  the  special  gift  but  have 
never  had  the  peculiar  opportunities  which  are  to- 
day necessary  to  allow  it  to  expand  and  function. 
But  there  is,  what  in  an  odd  way  consoles  us,  a  blind 
chance  that  the  gift  and  the  opportunity  may 
coincide;  that  Shelley  and  Browning  may  have  a 
competence,  and  Cezanne  a  farm-house  he  could 
retire  to.  Bureaucratic  Socialism  would,  it  seems, 
take  away  even  this  bHnd  chance  that  mankind  may 
benefit  by  its  least  appreciable,  most  elusive  treas- 
ures, and  would  carefully  organise  the  complete  sup- 
pression of  original  creative  power;  would  organise 
into  a  universal  and  all-embracing  tyranny  the  al- 
ready overweening  and  disastrous  power  of  endowed 
official  art.  For  we  must  face  the  fact  that  the 
average  man  has  two  qualities  which  would  make 
the  proper  selection  of  the  artist  almost  impossible. 
He  has,  first  of  all,  a  touching  proclivity  to  awe-struck 

261 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

admiration  of  whatever  is  presented  to  him  as  noble 
by  a  constituted  authority;  and,  secondly,  a  com- 
plete absence  of  any  immediate  reaction  to  a  work 
of  art  until  his  judgment  has  thus  been  hypnotised 
by  the  voice  of  authority.  Then,  and  not  till  then, 
he  sees,  or  swears  he  sees,  those  adorable  Emperor's 
clothes  that  he  is  always  agape  for. 

I  am  speaking,  of  course,  of  present  conditions,  of 
a  populace  whose  emotional  life  has  been  drugged  by 
the  sugared  poison  of  pseudo-art,  a  populace  satu- 
rated with  snobbishness,  and  regarding  art  chiefly  for 
its  value  as  a  symbol  of  social  distinctions.  There 
have  been  times  when  such  a  system  of  public 
patronage  as  we  are  discussing  might  not  have  been 
altogether  disastrous.  Times  when  the  guilds  repre- 
sented more  or  less  adequately  the  genuine  artistic 
intelligence  of  the  time ;  but  the  creation,  first  of  all, 
of  aristocratic  art,  and  finally  of  pseudo-art,  have 
brought  it  about  that  almost  any  officially  organised 
system  would  at  the  present  moment  stereotype  all 
the  worst  features  of  modern  art. 

Now,  in  thus  putting  forward  the  extreme  diffi- 
culties of  any  system  of  publicly  controlled  art,  we 
are  emphasising  perhaps  too  much  the  idea  of  the 
artist  as  a  creator  of  purely  ideal  and  abstract  works, 
as  the  medium  of  inspiration  and  the  source  of 
revelation.  It  is  the  artist  as  prophet  and  priest  that 
we  have  been  considering,  the  artist  who  is  the 
articulate  soul  of  mankind.  Now  in  the  present 
commercial  State,  at  a  time  when  such  handiwork 

262 


THE  ARTIST  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

as  is  not  admirably  fitted  to  some  purely  utilitarian 
purpose  has  become  inanely  fatuous  and  grotesque, 
the  artist  in  this  sense  has  undoubtedly  become  of 
supreme  importance  as  a  protestant,  as  one  who 
proclaims  that  art  is  a  reasonable  function,  and  one 
that  proceeds  by  a  nice  adjustment  of  means  to  ends. 
But  if  we  suppose  a  state  in  which  all  the  ordinary 
objects  of  daily  life — our  chairs  and  tables,  our 
carpets  and  pottery — expressed  something  of  this 
reasonableness  instead  of  a  crazy  and  vapid  fantasy, 
the  artist  as  a  pure  creator  might  become,  not  indeed 
of  less  importance — rather  more — but  a  less  acute 
necessity  to  our  general  living  than  he  is  to-day. 
Something  of  the  sanity  and  purposefulness  of  his 
attitude  might  conceivably  become  infused  into  the 
work  of  the  ordinary  craftsman,  something,  too,  of 
his  creative  energy  and  delight  in  work.  We  must, 
therefore,  turn  for  a  moment  from  the  abstractly 
creative  artist  to  the  applied  arts  and  those  who 
practise  them. 

We  are  so  far  obliged  to  protect  ourselves  from  the 
implications  of  modern  life  that  without  a  special 
effort  it  is  hard  to  conceive  the  enormous  quantity 
of  "art"  that  is  annually  produced  and  consumed. 
For  the  special  purpose  of  realising  it  I  take  the  pains 
to  write  the  succeeding  paragraphs  in  a  railway 
refreshment-room,  where  I  am  actually  looking  at 
those  terribly  familiar  but  fortunately  fleeting 
images  which  such  places  afford.  And  one  must 
remember  that  public  places  of  this  kind   merely 

263 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

reflect  the  average  citizen's  soul,  as  expressed  in  his 
home. 

The  space  my  eye  travels  over  is  a  small  one,  but 
I  am  appalled  at  the  amount  of  "art"  that  it  har- 
bours. The  window  towards  which  I  look  is  filled 
in  its  lower  part  by  stained  glass;  within  a  highly 
elaborate  border,  designed  by  some  one  who  knew 
the  conventions  of  thirteenth-century  glass,  is  a  pat- 
tern of  yellow  and  purple  vine  leaves  with  bunches  of 
grapes,  and  flitting  about  among  these  many  small 
birds.  In  front  is  a  lace  curtain  with  patterns  taken 
from  at  least  four  centuries  and  as  many  countries. 
On  the  walls,  up  to  a  height  of  four  feet,  is  a  covering 
of  lincrusta  walton  stamped  with  a  complicated  pat- 
tern in  two  colours,  with  sham  silver  medallions. 
Above  that  a  moulding  but  an  inch  wide,  and  yet 
creeping  throughout  its  whole  with  a  degenerate 
descendant  of  a  Grseco-Roman  carved  guilloche  pat- 
tern ;  this  has  evidently  been  cut  out  of  the  wood  by 
machine  or  stamped  out  of  some  composition — its 
nature  is  so  perfectly  concealed  that  it  is  hard  to  say 
which.  Above  this  is  a  wall-paper  in  which  an  effect 
of  eighteenth-century  satin  brocade  is  imitated  by 
shaded  staining  of  the  paper.  Each  of  the  little 
refreshment-tables  has  two  cloths,  one  arranged 
symmetrically  with  the  table,  the  other  a  highly 
ornate  printed  cotton  arranged  "artistically"  in  a 
diagonal  position.  In  the  centre  of  each  table  is  a 
large  pot  in  v/hich  every  beautiful  quality  in  the 
material  and  making  of  pots  has  been  carefully  ob- 

264 


THE  ARTIST  IN  THE   GREAT  STATE 

literated  by  methods  each  of  which  impHes  profound 
scientific  knowledge  and  great  inventive  talent. 
Within  each  pot  is  a  plant  with  large  dark-green 
leaves,  apparently  made  of  india-rubber.  This  pain- 
ful catalogue  makes  up  only  a  small  part  of  the  in- 
ventory of  the  "art"  of  the  restaurant.  If  I  were  to 
go  on  to  tell  of  the  legs  of  the  tables,  of  the  electric- 
light  fittings,  of  the  chairs  into  the  wooden  seats  of 
which  some  tremendous  mechanical  force  has  deeply 
impressed  a  large  distorted  anthemion — if  I  were  to 
tell  of  all  these  things,  my  reader  and  I  might  both 
begin  to  realise  with  painful  acuteness  something  of 
the  horrible  toil  involved  in  all  this  display.  Dis- 
play is  indeed  the  end  and  explanation  of  it  all.  Not 
one  of  these  things  has  been  made  because  the  maker 
enjoyed  the  making;  not  one  has  been  bought  be- 
cause its  contemplation  would  give  any  one  any 
pleasure,  but  solely  because  each  of  these  things  is 
accepted  as  a  symbol  of  a  particular  social  status.  I 
say  their  contemplation  can  give  no  one  pleasure; 
they  are  there  because  their  absence  would  be 
resented  by  the  average  man  who  regards  a  large 
amount  of  futile  display  as  in  some  way  inseparable 
from  the  conditions  of  that  well-to-do  life  to  which 
he  belongs  or  aspires  to  belong.  If  everything  were 
merely  clean  and  serviceable  he  would  proclaim  the 
place  bare  and  uncomfortable. 

The  doctor  who  lines  his  waiting-room  with  bad 
photogravures  and  worse  etchings  is  acting  on 
exactly  the  same  principle;   in  short,  nearly  all  our 

265 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

"art"  is  made,  bought,  and  sold  merely  for  its  value 
as  an  indication  of  social  status. 

Now  consider  the  case  of  those  men  whose  life-work 
it  is  to  stimulate  this  eczematous  eruption  of  pattern 
on  the  surface  of  modem  manufactures.  They  are 
by  far  the  most  numerous  "artists"  in  the  country. 
Each  of  them  has  not  only  learned  to  draw  but  has 
learned  by  sheer  application  to  put  forms  together 
with  a  similitude  of  that  coherence  which  creative 
impulse  gives.  Probably  each  of  them  has  some- 
where within  him  something  of  that  creative  impulse 
which  is  the  inspiration  and  delight  of  every  savage 
and  primitive  craftsman :  but  in  these  manufacturer's 
designers  the  pressure  of  commercial  life  has  crushed 
and  atrophied  that  creative  impulse  completely. 
Their  business  is  to  produce,  not  expressive  design, 
but  dead  patterns.  They  are  compelled,  therefore,  to 
spend  their  lives  behaving  in  an  entirely  idiotic  and 
senseless  manner,  and  that  with  the  certainty  that 
no  one  will  ever  get  positive  pleasure  from  the  result ; 
for  one  may  safely  risk  the  statement  that  until  I 
made  the  effort  just  now,  no  one  of  the  thousands  who 
use  the  refreshment-rooms  ever  really  looked  at  the 
designs. 

Now  what  effect  would  the  development  of  the 
Great  State  which  this  book  anticipates  have  upon 
all  this?  First,  I  suppose  that  the  fact  that  every 
one  had  to  work  might  produce  a  new  reverence, 
especially  in  the  governing  body,  for  work,  a  new 
sense  of  disgust  and  horror  at  wasteful  and  purpose- 

266 


THE  ARTIST  IN   THE   GREAT  STATE 

kss  work.  Mr,  Money  has  written  of  waste  of  work; 
here  in  unwanted  pseudo-art  is  another  colossal 
waste.  Add  to  this  ideal  of  economy  in  work  the 
presumption  that  the  workers  in  every  craft  would 
be  more  thoroughly  organised  and  would  have  a  more 
decisive  voice  in  the  nature  and  quality  of  their  pro- 
ductions. Under  the  present  system  of  commercial- 
ism the  one  object,  and  the  complete  justification,  of 
producing  any  article  is,  that  it  can  be  made  either 
by  its  intrinsic  value,  or  by  the  fictitious  value  put 
upon  it  by  advertisement,  to  sell  with  a  sufficient 
profit  to  the  manufacturer.  In  any  socialistic  state, 
I  imagine — and  to  a  large  extent  the  Great  State  will 
be  socialistic  at  least — there  would  not  be  this  same 
automatic  justification  for  manufacture;  people 
would  not  be  induced  artificially  to  buy  what  they 
did  not  want,  and  in  this  way  a  more  genuine  scale 
of  values  would  be  developed.  Moreover,  the  work- 
man would  be  in  a  better  position  to  say  how  things 
should  be  made.  After  years  of  a  purely  commer- 
cial standard,  there  is  even  now,  in  the  average 
workman,  left  a  certain  bias  in  favour  of  sound  and 
reasonable  workmanship  as  opposed  to  the  ingenious 
manufacture  of  fatuous  and  fraudulent  objects; 
and,  if  we  suppose  the  immediate  pressure  of  sheer 
necessity  to  be  removed,  it  is  probable  that  the 
craftsman,  acting  through  his  guild  organisations, 
would  determine  to  some  extent  the  methods  of 
manufacture.  Guilds  might,  indeed,  regain  some- 
thing of  the  political  influence  that  gave  us  the  Gothic 

267 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

cathedrals  of  the  Middle  Ages.  It  is  quite  probable 
that  this  guild  influence  would  act  as  a  check  on 
some  innovations  in  manufacture  which,  though 
bringing  in  a  profit,  are  really  disastrous  to  the 
community  at  large.  Of  such  a  nature  are  all  the 
so-called  improvements  whereby  decoration,  the  whole 
value  of  which  consists  in  its  expressive  power,  is 
multiplied  indefinitely  by  machinery.  When  once 
the  question  of  the  desirability  of  any  and  every 
production  came  to  be  discussed,  as  it  would  be  in 
the  Great  State,  it  would  inevitably  follow  that  some 
reasonable  and  scientific  classifications  would  be 
undertaken  with  regard  to  machinery.  That  is  to 
say,  it  would  be  considered  in  what  process  and  to 
what  degree  machinery  ought  to  replace  handi- 
work, both  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  community 
as  a  whole  and  from  that  of  the  producer.  So  far 
as  I  know,  this  has  never  been  undertaken  even  with 
regard  to  mere  economy,  no  one  having  calculated 
with  precision  how  far  the  longer  life  of  certain 
hand -made  articles  does  not  more  than  compensate 
for  increased  cost  of  production.  And  I  suppose 
that  in  the  Great  State  other  things  besides  mere 
economy  would  come  into  the  calculation.  The 
Great  State  will  live,  not  hoard. 

It  is  probable  that  in  many  directions  we  should 
extend  mechanical  operations  immensely,  that  such 
things  as  the  actual  construction  of  buildings,  the 
mere  laying  and  placing  of  the  walls  might  become 
increasingly  mechanical.     Such    methods,   if    con- 

268 


THE  ARTIST  IN   THE  GREAT  STATE 

fined  to  purely  structural  elements,  are  capable  of 
beauty  of  a  special  kind,  since  they  can  express  the 
ordered  ideas  of  proportion,  balance,  and  interval  as 
conceived  by  the  creative  mind  of  the  architect. 
But  in  process  of  time  one  might  hope  to  see  a  sharp 
line  of  division  between  work  of  this  kind  and  such 
purely  expressive  and  non-utilitarian  design  as  we 
call  ornament;  and  it  would  be  felt  clearly  that  into 
this  field  no  mechanical  device  should  intrude,  that, 
while  ornament  might  be  dispensed  with,  it  could 
never  be  imitated,  since  its  only  reason  for  being  is 
that  it  conveys  the  vital  expressive  power  of  a  human 
mind  acting  constantly  and  directly  upon  material 
forms. 

Finally,  I  suppose  that  in  the  Great  State  we  might 
hope  to  see  such  a  considerable  levelling  of  social 
conditions  that  the  false  values  put  upon  art  by 
its  symbolising  of  social  status  would  be  largely 
destroyed  and,  the  pressure  of  mere  opinion  being 
relieved,  people  would  develop  some  more  immedi- 
ate reaction  to  the  work  of  art  than  they  can  at 
present  achieve. 

Supposing,  then,  that  under  the  Great  State  it 
was  found  impossible,  at  all  events  at  first,  to  stimu- 
late and  organise  the  abstract  creative  power  of  the 
pure  artist,  the  balance  might  after  all  be  in  favour 
of  the  new  order  if  the  whole  practice  of  appHed  art 
could  once  more  become  rational  and  purposeful. 
In  a  world  where  the  objects  of  daily  use  and  orna- 
ment were  made  with  practical  common  sense,  the 

18  269 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

esthetic  sense  would  need  far  less  to  seek  consolation 
and  repose  in  works  of  pure  art. 

Nevertheless,  in  the  long  run  mankind  will  not 
allow  this  function,  which  is  necessary  to  its  spirit- 
ual Hfe,  to  lapse  entirely.  I  imagine,  however,  that 
it  would  be  much  safer  to  penalise  rather  than  to 
stimulate  such  activity,  and  that  simply  in  order  to 
sift  out  those  with  a  genuine  passion  from  those  who 
are  merely  attracted  by  the  apparent  ease  of  the  pur- 
suit. I  imagine  that  the  artist  would  naturally  turn 
to  one  of  the  applied  arts  as  his  means  of  livelihood ; 
and  we  should  get  the  artist  coming  out  of  the 
bottega,  as  he  did  in  fifteenth-century  Florence. 
There  are,  moreover,  innumerable  crafts,  even  be- 
sides those  that  are  definitely  artistic,  which,  if 
pursued  for  short  hours  (Mr.  Money  has  shown 
how  short  these  hours  might  be),  would  leave 
a  man  free  to  pursue  other  calHngs  in  his  lei- 
sure. 

The  majority  of  poets  to-day  are  artists  in  this 
position.  It  is  comparatively  rare  for  any  one  to 
make  of  poetry  his  actual  means  of  liveHhood. 
Our  poets  are,  first  of  all,  clerks,  critics,  civil  servants, 
or  postmen.  I  very  much  doubt  if  it  would  be  a 
serious  loss  to  the  community  if  the  pure  graphic 
artist  were  in  the  same  position.  That  is  to  say, 
that  all  our  pictures  would  be  made  by  amateurs. 
It  is  quite  possible  to  suppose  that  this  would  be  not 
a  loss,  but  a  great  gain.  The  painter's  means  of  live- 
lihood would  probably  be  some  craft  in  which  his 

270 


THE  ARTIST   IN   THE  GREAT   STATE 

artistic  powers  would  be  constantly  occupied,  though 
at  a  lower  tension  and  in  a  humbler  way.  The  Great 
State  aims  at  human  freedom;  essentially,  it  is  an 
organisation  for  leisure — out  of  which  art  grows; 
it  is  only  a  purely  bureaucratic  Socialism  that 
would  attempt  to  control  the  aesthetic  lives  of 
men. 

So  I  conceive  that  those  in  whom  the  instinct  for 
abstract  creative  art  was  strongest  would  find  ample 
opportunities  for  its  exercise,  and  that  the  tempta- 
tion to  simulate  this  particular  activity  would  be 
easily  resisted  by  those  who  had  no  powerful  inner 
compulsion. 

In  the  Great  State,  moreover,  and  in  any  sane 
Socialism,  there  would  be  opportunity  for  a  large 
amount  of  purely  private  buying  and  selling.  Mr. 
Wells's  Modern  Utopia,  for  example,  hypothecates 
a  vast  superstructure  of  private  trading.  A  painter 
might  sell  his  pictures  to  those  who  were  engaged 
in  more  lucrative  employment,  though  one  supposes 
that  with  the  much  more  equal  distribution  of  wealth 
the  sums  available  for  this  would  be  incomparably 
smaller  than  at  present;  a  picture  would  not  be 
a  speculation,  but  a  pleasure,  and  no  one  would 
become  an  artist  in  the  hope  of  making  a  for- 
tune. 

Ultimately,  of  course,  when  art  had  been  purified 
of  its  present  unreality  by  a  prolonged  contact 
with  the  crafts,  society  would  gain  a  new  confidence 
in  its  collective  artistic  judgment,  and  might  even 

271 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

boldly  assume  the  responsibility  which  at  present  it 
knows  it  is  unable  to  face.  It  might  choose  its  poets 
and  painters  and  philosophers  and  deep  investigators, 
and  make  of  such  men  and  women  a  new  kind  of 
kings. 


THE   PRESENT   DEVELOPMENT  OF 
THE   GREAT  STATE 

BY   G.   R.    STIRLING   TAYLOR 


X 

THE   PRESENT   DEVELOPMENT   OF 
THE   GREAT   STATE 


It  is  possible  that  some  of  the  readers  of  this 
book  of  essays  may  find  the  ideas  involved  in  the 
conception  of  the  Great  State  altogether  detached 
from  the  facts  of  contemporary  life  and  present 
social  construction.  They  may  rather  hastily  as- 
sume that,  however  desirable  and  pleasurable  these 
ideals  may  be,  they  are  beyond  the  reach  of  human 
attainment,  and  not  in  the  line  of  any  possible 
social  development.  It  will  be  the  endeavour  of  the 
present  writer  to  consider  the  connecting-links 
which,  he  believes,  bind  the  ideal  of  the  Great  State 
into  an  intimate  union  with  the  facts  of  the  social 
order  (or  disorder)  of  to-day  and  to-morrow. 

The  use  of  the  term  "development"  in  the  title 
of  this  essay  may  be  expanded  by  an  initial  explana- 
tion. There  will  be  no  assumption  here  that  a  period 
of  Transition  will  be  followed  by  a  time  when  the 
Great  State  can  be  said  to  have  arrived  as  an  ac- 
compHshed  fact.     The  evidence  before  us  seems  to 

275 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

forbid  any  such  distinction  between  a  period  of 
travelling  and  a  moment  of  arrival.  The  serious 
social  reformer  is  wise  enough  to  hope  that  he  will 
never  arrive;  he  is  optimistic  enough  to  believe 
that  there  will  always  be  something  better  beyond. 
He  does  not  visualise  himself  as  one  of  a  party  of 
excursionists  who  will  be  disembarked  at  the  Mil- 
lennium, as  it  might  be  at  the  end  of  his  favourite 
sea-side  pier.  The  conception  of  continual  travel- 
ling is  innate  in  the  ideal. 

The  Great  State  will  not  be  a  spontaneous  crea- 
tion or  a  sudden  accomplishment.  If  it  come  at  all, 
it  will  be  by  a  development  of  the  human  affairs  which 
make  up  the  States  of  to-day.  This  essay  will  en- 
deavour to  analyse  these  existing  social  phenomena, 
in  order  that  it  may  be  shown  how,  in  the  opinion 
of  the  present  writer,  they  are  already  tending  in 
the  direction  of  the  Great  State,  which  is  the  ideal  of 
the  other  essayists  in  this  book. 


II 

THE    ELEMENTS    OF    DESTRUCTION 

It  will  be  generally  admitted  that  there  is  no  static 
condition  in  social  organisation.  It  is  one  of  the 
chief  virtues  of  human  nature  to  be  eternally  dis- 
contented. The  healthy  mind  is  continually  striv- 
ing for  something  which  it  does  not  possess.  And 
this  demand  for  change  seems  especially  insistent 

276 


THE    PRESENT    DEVELOPMENT 

at  the  present  moment;  the  constructive  statesman 
of  the  day  is  faced  by  a  more  or  less  coherent  chorus 
of  demands  which  will  not  be  satisfied  by  any  trivial 
reform.  For  the  purposes  of  clarity,  it  will  be  con- 
venient to  group  these  elements  of  discontent  round 
three  main  points. 

There  is,  first,  that  chaotic  manifestation  of  un- 
rest which  the  newspaper  headlines  very  fitly  name 
The  Labour  War — the  struggle  between  the  wage- 
earners  and  the  masters  who  buy  their  labour.  The 
wage-earners  are  demanding  a  higher  wage,  shorter 
hours,  and  better  conditions;  in  fact,  they  ask  for 
a  larger  share  of  the  good  things  of  life.  This  is  no 
new  fact  in  history;  it  has  been  a  very  general  hu- 
man demand  all  through,  wherever  masters  and  men 
have  confronted  each  other.  The  new  note  in  the 
situation  is  the  fact  that  there  are  indications  that 
the  demand  is  now  so  united  and  insistent  that  the 
present  system  of  industrial  organisation  cannot  long 
continue  to  stand  the  strain.  While  the  profits  of 
capital  become  smaller  and  more  precarious,  the 
workers  are  continually  demanding  that  their  share 
of  the  profits  shall  be  larger.  We  seem  to  be  near- 
ing  the  point  when  it  will  no  longer  be  possible  to 
pay  a  dividend  to  shareholders  and  employers  when 
the  wages  bill  has  been  paid.  Moreover,  the  workers 
are  being  impelled  towards  revolutionary  thoughts 
and  deed  by  the  higher  prices  which  are  encroaching 
on  their  already  scanty  wages.  It  also  seems  ob- 
vious that,  by  continual  strikes,  the  workers  can  in- 

277 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

sist  on  their  case  being  dealt  with  first.  In  other 
words,  whatever  may  have  been,  or  whatever  are 
the  advantages  of  the  present  industrial  system 
under  the  control  of  the  capitalists,  it  is  now  on  the 
point  of  breaking  down,  becoming  impossible. 
Profit-making  is  its  imperative  end,  and  this  is 
rapidly  becoming  more  difficult  to  reach. 

But  the  Laboiu"  War  is  not  merely  between  mas- 
ter and  man.  The  capitalists  are  not  only  at  war 
with  their  workmen;  they  are  at  equally  deadly  war 
with  each  other.  The  reformer  can  claim  that  he 
is  trying  to  save  them  from  destruction  instead  of 
trying  to  destroy  them  The  smaller  capitalists, 
the  smaller  wholesale  and  retail  producers  and  dis- 
tributors are  wearing  each  other  out  in  a  fierce  war 
waged  to  get  control  of  the  market.  Circling  round 
these  smaller  men  are  the  great  financiers  (for  they 
are  now  men  with  the  banker's  mind,  rather  than 
experts  in  the  intimate  processes  of  their  trades) ; 
these  greater  capitalists  are  gradually  extinguishing 
the  weaker  members  of  their  class;  the  small  work- 
shop is  being  shut  because  it  can  no  longer  do  its 
work  as  quickly  and  cheaply  as  the  large  factory. 
Even  in  distribution,  the  independent  shopkeeper 
is  being  supplanted  by  the  "multiple-shop"  system, 
where  often  the  retention  of  the  individual  name 
only  covers  the  position  of  the  commissioned  agent 
of  the  combine  which  is  working  in  the  background. 

So  this  term  "Labour  War"  really  covers  some- 
thing wider  than  the  ghastly  struggle  of  the  manual 

278 


THE    PRESENT    DEVELOPMENT 

labourers.  It  is  a  competition  for  the  right  to  a 
tolerable  living  wage,  fought  out  between  all  those 
human  beings  who  are  not  in  possession  of  sufficient 
capital  to  allow  them  to  look  over  the  battle-field 
as  non-combatants — that  is  to  say,  as  persons  pos- 
sessing a  "private  income."  There  are  compara- 
tively few  capitalists,  however,  who  are  not  also 
themselves  engaged  in  the  struggle,  which,  indeed,  is 
the  general  basis  of  life  in  all  the  present  great  com- 
munities. 

It  seems  clear  that  a  further  development  of  this 
struggle  will  bring  about  an  impossible  situation. 
To  a  believer  in  the  advantages  of  the  Great  State, 
it  is  illuminating  to  observe  that  this  Industrial 
War  is  crushing  out  that  wasteful  competition  which 
the  collectivist  reformers  have  long  condemned. 
The  smaller  men,  even  the  smaller  states,  are  being 
eliminated  by  the  Pierpont  Morgans,  the  Speyers, 
the  Rockefellers,  the  Rothschilds,  the  Harrimans,  the 
Beits.  It  begins  to  appear  that  one  of  these  days, 
if  the  present  process  continues  without  a  change 
of  direction,  we  may  get  the  Great  State,  indeed;* 
but  it  will  be  under  the  autocratic  control  of  the 
final  survivors  of  this  terrific  industrial  struggle. 
It  is  possible,  by  a  happy  chance,  that  these  victors 
might  be  benevolent  despots,  who  would  provide 
for  all  their  subjects  a  sufficiently  generous  living. 
But  such  a  state  as  this  would  be  incompatible  with 
the  possession  of  that  individual  liberty  which  is 

'  See  Wells's  When  the  Sleeper  Wakes  for  an  anticipation  of  this. 

279 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

one  of  the  fundamental  desires  of  the  healthy  and 
well-developed  mind.  It  is,  on  the  whole,  only  the 
cramped  mind  that  can  submit  to  domination  or 
can  look  forward  with  pleasure  to  a  plutocrat-ap- 
pointed bureaucracy,  however  benevolent. 

One  turns  from  the  discontents  of  the  Labour  War 
— the  distress  of  wage-earners  and  bankrupt  masters 
— to  another  huge  mass  of  revolutionary  ferment — 
the  Revolt  of  the  Women.  It  is  scarcely  less  widely 
spread  than  the  revolt  of  labour;  and  its  basis  is  not 
very  different.  Like  the  wage-earner,  the  woman 
is  demanding  a  fuller  share  of  the  good  things  of 
life.  In  so  far  as  she  is  a  worker  already,  she  is 
conscious  that  she  is  getting  even  a  lower  wage  than 
the  men  who  are  working  beside  her.  The  great 
majority  of  the  sweated  workers  are  women.  Again, 
take  the  case  of  the  Civil  Service  as  an  example :  the 
woman  clerk  gets  a  lower  salary  when  she  does  the 
same  amount  of  work  as  her  male  companion.  That 
it  is  often  the  same  amount  of  work  has  recently 
been  illustrated  by  the  fact  that  the  British  Postal 
Savings  Bank  Department  has  been  put  on  a 
more  economic  basis  by  the  substitution  of  women 
for  male  clerks.  Presumably  the  same  amount  of 
work  has  to  be  done  by  these  clerks — the  saving 
comes  from  the  fact  that  the  women  are  paid  less 
than  the  men. 

But  there  is  another  element  in  the  women's  de- 
mands. Not  only  do  they  demand  an  equal  wage 
for  equal  work;  they  are  also  claiming  that  they 

280 


THE    PRESENT    DEVELOPMENT 

shall  be  allowed  to  share  in  the  responsibility  of  the 
intelligent  work  of  the  world — in  the  organisation 
of  their  community  as  politicians  and  voters,  in 
the  professions,  in  the  arts.  They  ask  that  the 
sex  barrier  shall  be  removed  from  the  door  to  these 
things:  they  ask  that  their  success  or  failure  shall, 
at  least,  be  fairly  tested :  that  the  distinction  of  sex 
shall  not  be  considered  in  the  field  of  work.  The 
merits  of  this  demand  are  not  in  question  for  the 
moment;  they  are  the  subject  of  another  of  these 
essays.  We  have  now  merely  to  register  this  dis- 
content as  one  of  the  factors  of  the  present  situation. 

Beyond  this  demand  for  the  removal  of  the  sex 
barrier  in  affairs  where,  they  claim,  the  distinction 
of  sex  has  no  place,  women  are  also  insistently 
asking  for  a  wider  freedom  in  that  relation  of  lover 
and  child-bearer  wherein  their  distinctive  sex  at- 
tributes are  concerned.  In  the  relationship  of  mar- 
riage and  parenthood,  the  women  claim  that  they 
must  be  on  an  equality  with  men.  This  demand 
will  be  discussed  later  on  in  this  essay. 

There  is  a  third  classification  of  present-day  dis- 
content, which  perhaps  cuts  through  all  the  other 
classes  of  discontent;  but  it  is  such  a  definite  thing, 
and  a  demand  which  is  so  bitterly  threatening  the 
present  social  structure,  that  it  deserves  tabulation 
by  itself.  It  is  that  wide-spread  desire,  common 
to  all  classes  except  the  very  narrow  ones  which 
are  in  possession  of  ample  means  of  living,  that 
there  shall  be  some  fuller  realisation  of  the  enjoy- 

281 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

ment  of  life.  Not  only  the  wage-earners,  but  also 
the  salaried  men,  the  struggling  professional  classes, 
the  smaller  traders  with  their  back  to  the  wall 
against  competitive  stress — all  these  are  becoming 
conscious  that  there  is  no  organic  necessity  in 
social  structure  why  life  shoiild  be  a  frantic  driving 
for  the  supplying  of  mere  physical  needs.  The 
thoughtful  younger  members  of  the  middle  class 
are  especially  getting  impatient  when  they  see  all 
these  possibilities  of  a  generous  and  dignified  career 
submerged  in  a  chaotic  muddle  of  social  mismanage- 
ment and  easily  avoidable  economic  errors.  They 
are  thrown,  side  by  side  with  the  more  cruelly 
crushed  weekly  wage-earners,  into  the  pit  of  social 
anarchy;  and  they  are  coming  to  see  that  their 
salvation  lies  along  the  same  road.  And  the 
root  of  this  restless  discontent  is  that  desire  for  the 
sweeter  things  of  life,  the  consciousness  that  it 
may  be  something  more  than  ceaseless  toil;  it  is 
that  vague,  impulsive  longing  to  have  time  to  feel 
"the  wind  on  the  heath"  that  Borrow's  gipsy 
knew.  The  most  insistent  things  of  life — the  driving 
force  behind  revolutions — are  often  most  vague. 
Perhaps  it  can  be  expressed  as  the  desire  to  pro- 
tect that  individual  freedom  which  is  being  crushed 
out  by  the  present  system  of  capitalist  domination. 
The  present  social  organisation  does  not  seem  able 
to  offer  any  satisfaction  to  the  three-noted  cry  of 
discontent  which  one  has  attempted  to  sum  up 
briefly  in  the  above  passages.     It  is  clear  that  a  way 

282 


THE    PRESENT    DEVELOPMENT 

out  must  be  found.  The  ideal  of  the  Great  State, 
expressed  in  this  volume,  is  one  offer  of  a  solution. 
Having  seen  the  elements  which  are  making  towards 
the  end  of  the  present  social  organisation,  one  now 
proceeds  to  pick  up  those  lines  of  existing  develop- 
ments which  make  it  possible  and  even,  one  sug- 
gests, inevitable  that  our  social  affairs  should  lead 
in  the  direction  of  this  Great  State. 


Ill 

THE    ELEMENTS    OF    CONSTRUCTION 

The  first  thought  that  occurs  when  one  considers 
the  Great  State  is  that  such  complex  social  machin- 
ery could  only  be  worked  by  a  highly  educated  peo- 
ple. It  is  almost  as  much  beyond  the  intelligence 
of  the  present  citizens  as  it  would  be  beyond  the 
intelligence  of  a  bushman  to  administer  a  munic- 
ipal constitution.  The  vast  stretches  of  country, 
both  physical  and  intellectual,  which  would  be  con- 
trolled by  the  machinery  of  the  Great  State  will  need 
for  their  handling  a  knowledge  of  facts  and  a  power 
of  logical  judgment  which  is  certainly  not  possessed 
by  the  present  electorate,  or  even  by  its  statesmen 
and  bureaucrats. 

It  is  not  so  much  the  good-will  that  is  lacking  in 
the  average  citizen  of  to-day;  he  is,  take  him  all 
round,  neither  vicious  nor  anti-social.  He  is  not  a 
grasping  person  who  desires  to  rob  his  fellow-men 

283 


SOCIALISM  AND   THE  GREAT  STATE 

of  everything  that  he  can  take.  His  desire  for  gain 
is  usually  a  perfectly  healthy  and  legitimate  wish 
to  have  a  full  life;  he  is  only  made  brutal  in  its 
pursuit  because,  under  the  laws  of  the  present  in- 
dustrial organisation,  one  must  often  be  brutal  or 
go  under.  It  is  not  his  instincts  that  are  far  wrong; 
his  chief  fault  is  his  ignorance.  The  average  man 
of  to-day  is  a  light-hearted  person  who  does  not 
trouble  to  think  out  the  whys  and  wherefores,  or  the 
precise  method  by  which  the  largest  amount  of 
happiness  and  comfort  can  be  obtained.  He  pre- 
fers to  enjoy  himself  rather  than  to  think.  This 
is,  perhaps,  not  altogether  an  unhealthy  state  of 
mind. 

We  shall  not  get  much  further  in  the  perfecting 
of  our  social  organisation  until  the  normal  citizen 
has  been  educated  to  think  more  quickly  and  more 
accurately.  The  wise  community  will  consider 
that  no  sum  is  too  high  to  spend  on  making  the 
education  of  its  citizens  as  full  as  possible.  It  is 
the  basis  of  every  other  reform,  it  is  the  investment 
which  pays  higher  interest  than  any  other  enter- 
prise. Just  as  a  manufacturer  knows  that  it  pays 
to  have  the  best  machinery,  so  a  wise  statesmanship 
will  maintain  that  it  pays  the  Nation  to  have  the 
finest  human  machinery.  It  is  scarcely  realised 
what  an  enormous  waste  in  productive  power  is 
caused  by  inefficient  and  niggardly  education.  To 
send  the  children  from  the  schools  to  work  as  we 
send  them,  imperfectly  equipped,  to-day,  is  little 

284 


THE    PRESENT    DEVELOPMENT 

better  than  sending  a  man  to  dig  with  a  wooden 
spade  when  we  might  give  him  an  iron  one.  A 
highly  educated  citizen  will  be  the  basis  of  the 
Great  State;  for  only  from  such  material  can  come 
a  sufficient  volume  of  demand  for  intelligent  reform, 
and  only  by  the  hands  and  brains  of  such  people 
will  it  be  possible  to  produce  all  that  wealth  which 
is  necessary  for  a  civilised  life;  at  least,  only  by 
efficient  workers  will  it  be  possible  to  get  this  work 
done  without  wearisome  toil. 

This  improvement  in  education  has  already  made 
a  definite  advance  during  the  last  half-century;  and 
it  is  probably  the  cause  of  the  increasing  insistence 
of  the  discontent  analysed  above.  This  advance 
is  produced  not  merely  by  the  formal  school;  it  is 
being  accomplished  by  our  newspapers,  by  the  vast 
supplies  of  books,  by  every  instrument  which  tells 
the  citizen  something  about  the  world  in  which  he 
lives.  It  is  useless  for  the  conservative  statesmen 
(whether  Tory  or  Liberal)  to  try  to  resent  great 
change  if  they  allow  the  halfpenny  paper  and  six- 
penny novel  and  the  shilling  classic  to  exist;  and 
these  agencies  are  already  working  for  the  Great 
State.  That  is  the  first  development  which  one  can 
claim  to  be  going  in  the  right  direction. 

Closely  linked  with  the  extension  of  information, 
the  widening  of  horizons,  this  improvement  of  men- 
tal education,  goes  the  improvement  of  the  physical 
health  of  the  community,  which  again  has  only  to 
continue   to  develop  on   lines  already  laid   down. 

19  285 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

For  example,  there  is  the  plan  of  providing  meals 
at  the  public  elementary  school.     By  that  system 
two  immediate  ends  will  be  attained :  first,  the  chil- 
dren's food  will  be  better  in  quality  and  in  quantity, 
and  there  will  be  economy  by  the  cooking  on  a  large 
scale  instead  of  the  senseless  waste  of  hundreds  of 
repeated  operations;    secondly,  the  mothers  will  be 
reheved  of  an  appreciable  amount  of  their  present 
serious  overwork  in  the  home.     School  meals  will 
thus  benefit  the  health  of  the  mother  as  well  as  the 
health  of  her  child.     At  first,  perhaps,  a  charge  will 
be  made  for  this  food;   but  when  it  is  realised  that 
healthy  children  are  a  State  asset,   and  that  the 
parents  are  the  tax-payers,  then  it  will  soon  be  held 
ridiculous  that  they  should,  as  parents,  pay  them- 
selves as  citizens.     It  will  not  be  worth  the  bother 
of  book-keeping  such  a  simple  circulation  of  money. 
The   preventive    side    of    public-health   adminis- 
tration will  get  unlimited  funds  when  it  is  realised, 
as  is  rapidly  happening  that  it  costs  less  to  prevent 
disease  than  to  cure  it.    The  recognition  of  this  fact 
will   mean   the   more   energetic   development   of   a 
whole  group  of  reforms  which  are  already  on  the 
statute-books  of  most  civilised  states.    The  sweeping- 
away  of  the  slum  areas  has  already  been  linked  to 
the  beginning  of  a  system  of  municipal  housing  and 
town-planning;    which,  in  its  train,  is  bringing  the 
possession  of  public  land  and  the  ousting  of  the 
private  landlord.     Again,   considerations  of  public 
health   will   be   the   utilitarian   motive   behind   the 

286 


THE    PRESENT    DEVELOPMENT 

probable  development  of  municipal  bakeries  and 
municipal  milk  farms,  which  will  be  followed  by 
the  public  town  farm  for  the  production  of  the  vege- 
tables and  fruits  which  will  not  stand  carriage 
from  a  greater  State  farm.  Instead  of  bearing  the 
worry  of  inspecting  private  cow-sheds  and  pouncing 
on  private  milk  for  analysis,  it  will  dawn  on  the 
most  classical  of  Town  Councillors  that  it  would  be 
better  to  have  the  whole  process  under  their  control 
from  the  beginning,  with  the  added  advantage  of  the 
larger  profits  or  cheaper  prices  which  will  follow  the 
larger-scale  production.  On  all  matters  of  this  kind 
there  will  be  a  simple-minded,  even  if  sincere,  attempt 
to  defeat  the  schemes  by  quoting  the  abstract 
philosophy  of  "private  enterprise."  But  the  major- 
ity of  the  people  will  see  no  advantage  in  defending 
abstractions  if  they  have  to  risk  an  early  death 
from  contaminated  milk  and  pay  a  higher  price 
as  the  sequence  of  their  philosophy.  And  it  will  be 
the  same  common-sense  practice,  rather  than  ab- 
stract reasoning,  which  will  initiate  most  reforms 
of  the  collectivist  kind  we  are  now  discussing. 

The  department  of  curative  medicine  will  decrease 
in  importance  as  the  preventive  side  succeeds  in  its 
work.  For  the  sake  of  the  whole  people,  even  if 
no  motives  of  pity  intervened,  an  intelligent  com- 
munity will  continue  to  provide  a  fuller  series  of 
hospitals  and  convalescent  homes.  Of  course,  there 
will  be  no  charge  made  on  the  individual  patients. 
One  would  no  more  ask  a  fee  for  the  opportunity 

287 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

to  stop  the  spread  of  dangerous  disease  or  the  loss 
of  a  working  member  of  the  community,  than  one 
would  demand  a  fee  from  a  tiger  if  it  called  at  an 
Indian  village  with  the  request  that  the  headman 
would  draw  all  its  teeth.  Besides,  it  is  almost  im- 
possible to  trace  the  disease  to  its  responsible  source. 
Why  charge  A  with  the  cost  of  curing  his  children 
of  consumption  when  the  infection  came  from  B's 
children,  who  caught  it  from  C's?  Only  those  who 
have  a  morbid  interest  in  private  detective  agencies 
could  be  bothered  to  work  out  the  problem  to  its  end. 
While  the  citizens  are  being  trained  to  a  higher 
standard  of  mental  and  physical  fitness  the  machin- 
ery of  the  State  will  be  developing;  the  process  is 
coincident,  partly  cause  and  partly  effect.  The 
development  towards  the  larger  industrial  organ- 
isations which  are  inherent  in  the  Great  State  ideal 
has  already  begun.  Alike  on  the  employer's  side, 
in  the  form  of  Companies  and  Trusts;  and  on  the 
wage-earner's  side,  in  the  form  of  Trade-Unions  and 
Federations;  this  process  is  working  itself  out  be- 
fore our  eyes.  In  the  shape  of  the  vast  co-operative 
Societies,  productive  and  distributing,  we  have  a 
kind  of  cross  between  the  two;  which,  however 
incomplete  and  undemonstrative,  is  still  an  admi- 
rable object-lesson  in  social  machinery.  The  present 
tendency  is  for  these  organisms  to  grow  greater 
every  year.  Although  as  yet  the  process  remains 
based  on  the  capitalist-wage-earner  system,  the 
machinery   itself   is   not    very    different    from   the 

288 


THE    PRESENT    DEVELOPMENT 

machinery  which  may  conceivably  be  used  in  the 
Great  State.  It  is,  indeed,  possible  to  conceive  of 
the  machinery  of  the  embryo  Great  State  being  in  a 
fairly  complete  condition,  while  the  resulting  wealth 
is  still  credited  to  the  banking  accounts  of  a  group 
of  capitalists.  For  example,  if  things  went  on  as 
they  are  at  present  tending,  the  railways  of  England 
would  soon  be  under  the  control  of  one  central 
private  Railway  Board.  The  same  tendency  shows 
itself  in  many  industries  and  distributing  agencies: 
centralisation  and  a  common  control  are  becoming 
the  normal  state  of  affairs.  For  example,  we  read 
of  Meat  Trusts,  Cotton-Thread  Combines,  Tobacco 
Trusts,  Shipping  Amalgamations. 

A  very  slight  rearrangement  of  affairs  might 
change  this  capitalist  industrial  machinery  into 
Central  Departments  of  a  Great  State.  The  es- 
sential change  would  be  that  the  resulting  wealth 
would  no  longer  be  allotted  to  the  capitalist  as  such ; 
though  it  may  well  be  that  the  Great  State  will 
continue  to  pay  large  salaries  or  commissions  to  the 
"captains  of  industry."  But  that  is  an  open  ques- 
tion: it  will  choose  the  method  which  gives  the 
best  results  in  the  production  of  social  wealth  and 
human  character. 

This  attainment  of  economy  in  industrial  proc- 
esses by  large  organisation  must  not  by  any  means 
be  accepted  as  an  invariable  rule,  inherent  without 
exception  in  the  structure  of  such  an  ideal  as  the 
Great   State.     Economy   of   time  and  labour   will 

289 


SOCIALISM   AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

only  be  sought  by  that  method  when  the  large  or- 
ganisation does  not  encroach  on  the  pleasure  which 
the  human  mind  (in  many  cases  at  least)  takes  in 
the  more  direct  personal  process  which  is  con- 
veniently described  as  handicraft,  as  distinguished 
from  machine  production.  If  it  so  happens  that 
the  raising  of  the  standard  of  education  and  the 
decrease  of  boisterous  competition  shall  produce  a 
majority  of  citizens  approximating  to  the  type  of 
William  Morris,  then  it  is  probable  that  there  will 
be  a  general  agreement  to  sacrifice  a  part  of  the  time 
that  might  be  economised  by  the  machine,  and  re- 
turn to  hand  labour  in  some  processes,  if  it  gives 
a  definite  return  in  pleasure  to  the  craftsman. 

But  in  all  such  departments  as  transit  and  dis- 
tribution, and  in  a  large  number  of  the  industrial 
processes  (such  as  the  manufacture  of  raw  material, 
the  making  of  steel  and  leather,  of  uniform  cloth 
and  linen  goods,  and  so  on) ,  the  claims  of  the  crafts- 
men will  scarcely  be  advanced.  The  general  point 
to  note  is  that  each  question  of  this  kind  will  be 
decided  on  its  merit  as  it  arises,  on  the  principle 
that  the  methods  of  labour  must  give  way  to  the 
rational  desires  of  man,  not  man  to  an  autocratic 
demand  for  cheap  and  rapid  production.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  human  being  of  the  future  may 
decide  that  it  is  better  to  produce  necessities  as 
quickly  as  possible,  and  use  the  economised  time 
in  some  manner  which  does  not  yet  appeal  to  the 
present  mind.     The  human  mind  is  a  subtle  thing; 

290 


THE    PRESENT    DEVELOPMENT 

it  would  be  unwise  to  dogmatise  as  to  what  it  will 
or  will  not  want.  The  citizens  of  the  Great  State 
may  crave  every  possible  moment  for  work  with 
the  hands;  or,  again,  for  the  contemplation  of 
mysticism;  or,  still  again,  for  the  unpremeditated 
delights  of  sport  and  play.  Who  knows  ?  Why  not 
some  of  every  kind? 

There  is  one  possible  development  of  industrial 
organisation  which  must  be  just  mentioned  before 
leaving  the  subject,  though  it  is  impossible  to  am- 
plify it  here,  for  it  is  a  very  debatable  subject  of 
which  the  facts  are  by  no  means  yet  clear.  It  is 
possible  that  the  function  of  the  State  as  an  organiser 
of  industry  may  take  the  form  of  sub-contracting 
work  to  trade-guilds  which  are,  in  fact,  Trade-Unions 
of  the  trade  concerned.  Thus,  it  is  possible  that 
the  State  may  get  its  railways  built  by  a  guild  or 
Trade-Union  of  Railway  Engineers;  or  a  town  may 
get  its  municipal  houses  constructed  by  a  guild  of 
builders;  its  concerts  may  be  provided  by  a  guild 
of  musicians,  and  so  on.  It  may  be  by  some  such 
method  as  this  that  the  problem  of  the  relations  of 
the  craftsman  and  artist  to  the  State  may  be  solved 
in  certain  trades.  Under  the  shelter  of  a  publicly 
recognised  guild  the  craftsman  may  be  able  to 
protect  himself  from  that  public  dominance  which  he 
dreads,  not  altogether  without  sound  reason.  But 
here  the  subject  can  only  be  dismissed  by  this  hint 
of  a  possible  solution. 

So  far,  we  have  been  discussing  possible  develop- 

291 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

ments  in  the  organisation  of  industrial  machinery. 
As  we  have  seen,  this  does  not  in  itself  settle  the 
question  of  the  distribution  of  the  products.  It  is 
scarcely  necessary  to  say  that  the  Great  State  will 
not  tolerate  the  present  injustice  of  this  distribu- 
tion. In  a  condition  of  society  where  all  will  have 
equal  chances  of  education  and  opportunity,  it  is 
probable  that  the  resulting  work  will  be  more  equal 
than  it  is  to-day;  and  there  will  certainly  be  a 
realisation  that  every  citizen  has  an  innate  right 
to  a  minimum  share  of  the  social  products,  which 
will  be  handed  over  to  him  without  excessive  bar- 
gaining as  to  return  duties. 

This  development  towards  a  communal  minimum 
has  already  begun  in  England  and  most  civilised 
states  by  the  provision  of  such  things  as  old-age 
pensions,  free  elementary  education,  free  roads,  free 
street  lighting,  free  police  service,  public  parks,  and 
municipal  bands  to  play  therein.  If  roads  are  free, 
there  is  no  possible  argument  against  free  railways; 
if  the  turnpike  gate  has  been  swept  away,  it  is  idle 
to  think  that  the  railway-ticket  barrier  will  remain 
eternally  sacred.  In  England  free  meals  at  the  pub- 
lic schools  have  been  already  provided  in  urgent 
cases;  the  process  is  extending,  and  it  seems  almost 
inevitable  that  the  provision  of  all  meals  for  all 
children  is  only  a  matter  of  time.  From  that  to 
the  provision  of  clothes  is  a  development  of  practice 
and  not  of  principle.  Again,  the  basis  of  a  free 
communal   medical   service   is   already   firmly   laid 

292 


THE    PRESENT    DEVELOPMENT 

down  by  our  school  inspection,  medical  officers  of 
health,  and  public  hospitals,  even  if  all  these  de- 
partments are  at  present  woefully  inefficient.  The 
Insurance  Act  recently  adopted  in  Great  Britain 
is  not  altogether  communal;  but  the  principle  of 
a  State  subsidy  to  insure  against  sickness  and  un- 
employment has  been  thereby  admitted,  although 
the  immediate  result  to  the  workers  is  probably  no 
present  advantage,  and  they  would  have  been  well 
advised  in  this  case  to  wait  a  little  longer  for  a 
completely  communal  system  of  general  insurance. 
It  is  probable  that  this  communal  system  may 
extend  until  it  covers  all  the  elementary  necessities 
of  life.  It  is  probable  that  a  full  minimum  of  food, 
clothing,  housing,  and  travel  may,  within  a  compara- 
tively short  time,  become  the  right  of  every  member 
of  the  Great  State.  But  it  does  not  necessarily  fol- 
low that  Communism  will  carry  us  beyond  this 
minimum.  It  is  not  an  ideal  which  covers  the 
whole  case  of  the  distribution  of  wealth.  It  must 
never  be  forgotten  that  the  end  of  social  organisa- 
tion is  to  give  the  greatest  amount  of  freedom  to 
the  individual.  We  will  not  make  out  a  case  for 
the  Great  State  unless  we  show  that  it  will  make 
the  individual  freer  than  he  is  under  the  Capitalist 
system.  It  will  be  an  advantage  to  give  the  citizen 
as  much  as  possible  of  his  wages  in  the  form  of  money 
which  he  can  exchange  as  he  pleases,  rather  than 
payments  in  kind,  which  he  must  take,  to  a  certain 
extent,  as  it  is  offered  by  the  State.     At  least,  he 

293 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

must  have  a  generous  margin  for  his  free  use,  over 
and  above  his  expenses  in  bare  necessities.  So  the 
problem  of  distribution  of  wealth  will  continue 
further  than  the  solution  by  communism.  Here 
again,  the  future  development  is  already  fore- 
shadowed by  the  existing  custom.  The  graduated 
income  tax,  with  its  super-tax  on  all  incomes  above 
a  determined  figure,  has  already  laid  down  a  system 
by  which  the  distribution  of  wealth  can  be  manip- 
ulated in  any  manner  that  the  community  desires. 

It  is  by  no  means  probable  that  even  the  most 
democratic  Great  State  will  insist  on  equality  of 
income;  those  who  look  forward  to  this  Great  State 
are  not  necessarily  in  conflict  with  those  who  say 
that  personal  gain  is  the  most  powerful  incentive  to 
work.  It  will  be  quite  possible,  by  the  method  of  a 
graduated  income  tax,  to  pare  down  the  excrescence 
of  undue  wealth  and  still  leave  its  legitimate  in- 
equalities. It  will  almost  certainly  be  by  the  gradu- 
ated and  super-income  tax  that  wealth  will  be  most 
fairly  distributed  during  the  transition  period  which 
we  are  now  considering.  The  clumsy  methods  of  tax- 
ing land  values  and  liquor,  tobacco  and  tea,  will  be 
dismissed  as  ineffective,  as  not  taxing  the  super- 
rich,  but,  on  the  contrary,  allowing  them  to  escape 
in  the  confused  complexity  of  the  national  budget. 

But  the  most  radical  way  to  distribute  wealth 
in  a  fairer  manner  is,  of  course,  to  pay  it  out  at 
the  start  in  fairer  wages  and  salaries.  It  will  be 
recognised  that  if  there  is  any  departure  from  the 

294 


THE    PRESENT    DEVELOPMENT 

line  of  crude  equality,  then  the  decision  of  what  is 
fair  will  remain  a  problem  of  detail  which  will  need 
continual  readjustment  and  cannot  be  solved  by 
any  hard-and-fast  principle.  It  is  probable  that  it 
will  work  itself  out  on  much  the  same  lines  that 
it  is  already  being  approached.  There  probably  will 
be  a  statutory  minimum  wage;  and  the  maximum 
will  be  won  by  some  kind  of  bargaining  between 
the  State  Departments  and  the  organised  workers 
in  these  trades ;  there  will,  in  short,  be  trade-unions, 
as  there  are  now. 

There  is  one  other  already  urgent  matter  of  social 
organisation  which  covers  a  vast  field,  and  yet  has  not 
conveniently  come  under  any  of  the  previous  heads 
of  structure  of  industry  or  the  distribution  of  wealth 
or  the  promotion  of  the  public  health.  In  truth, 
it  could  be  discussed  under  all  these  heads,  but  it 
will  be  clearer  to  give  it  a  place  by  itself.  One  refers 
to  the  position  of  the  Mother.  Stated  in  cold 
economic  terms,  detached  from  all  the  true  and  false 
glamour  that  clusters  round  her,  the  Mother  is,  as 
such,  a  worker  engaged  in  the  industry  of  producing 
that  most  valuable  of  social  wealth,  children.  The 
problem  which  arises  is  that  under  present  condi- 
tions she  is  not  paid  that  independent  wage,  secured 
by  a  contract,  which  is  the  legal  distinction  between 
the  position  of  the  free  worker  and  the  slave.  The 
Mother,  in  all  normal  cases,  has  merely  her  main- 
tenance according  to  the  standard  of  her  husband's 
position,  and  in  some  cases  an  indeterminate  sum, 

295 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

over  and  above,  at  her  own  disposal  beyond  house- 
keeping. This  analogy  with  the  position  of  a 
slave  does  not  necessarily  involve  the  statement 
that  the  mother  is  treated  with  cruelty  or  incon- 
sideration,  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  words.  But 
it  does  involve  the  statement  that  she  is  not  an  in- 
dependent unit  in  the  social  system.  The  same 
might  be  said,  in  a  sense,  of  every  worker  in  a 
factory  or  government  office  or  a  shop.  But  there 
is  this  radical  distinction:  however  badly  the 
ordinary  worker  be  paid,  she  gets  a  definite  wage  for 
more  or  less  definite  hours  of  service;  and  this  is 
the  basis  of  an  independent  life,  however  insuffi- 
cient. Whereas  the  position  of  the  mother  is  in- 
definite, and  decided  by  sentiment,  not  contract. 

As  it  is  an  essential  part  of  the  problem  of  the 
Great  State  to  find  the  method  which  will  loosen 
the  units  of  the  community  from  unnecessary  re- 
strictions on  their  individual  freedom,  it  is,  there- 
fore, logical  that  we  should  attempt  to  discover  a 
method  by  which  the  largest  class  of  workers,  the 
mothers,  should  be  given  a  just  and  substantial 
independence.  And  no  amount  of  beautiful  sen- 
timent will  be  a  substitute  for  a  definite  wage  en- 
forceable by  law.  The  question  follows:  Who  is  to 
fix  and  pay  that  wage  ? 

We  are  not  concerned  here  with  the  sex  relation- 
ship, except  in  so  far  as  it  results  in  a  child,  the  only 
point  where  the  community  seems  to  have  any  right 
to  interfere.     A  calm  consideration  of  all  the  facts 

296 


THE   PRESENT   DEVELOPMENT 

leads  one  to  believe  that  the  State  as  a  whole  is 
far  more  concerned  in  the  production  and  control  of 
children  than  either  the  father  or  the  mother,  and 
that  it  will  be  the  State,  not  the  father,  which  will 
in  future  pay  the  mother  the  wage  due  for  the  work 
she  expends  on  the  child.  The  endowment  of 
motherhood  (which  has  already  become  the  usual 
term  to  denote  this  idea)  will  be,  in  brief,  the  pay- 
ment to  the  mother  of  a  sufficient  wage  to  support 
herself  and  her  children  during  the  period  she  de- 
votes to  their  birth  and  rearing,  and  any  further 
period  during  which  she  is  incapacitated  by  her 
previous  specialisation  in  child-bearing.  It  will  be 
sufficient  to  cover  the  necessary  outgoing  expenses, 
and,  over  and  above  this,  provide  a  profit  to  her- 
self, at  her  own  free  disposal,  just  as  her  husband 
may  have  a  profit  over  the  expenses  of  his  trade  or 
profession.  In  short,  it  will  give  mothers  a  definite 
wage  for  a  social  service,  on  exactly  the  same  grounds 
that  any  other  work  is  rewarded. 

This  system  of  payment  for  mothers  (which  may 
be  established  much  sooner  than  many  of  us  imagine) 
would  be  the  longest  step  towards  the  collectivist 
community  that  the  world  yet  has  seen.  It  will 
be  the  more  easily  carried  into  practice  by  the  fuller 
development  of  that  system  of  collective  house- 
keeping which  has  already  begun,  and  is  another 
development  in  the  direction  of  the  Great  State. 
The  large  co-operative  blocks  or  squares  of  dwell- 
ings,  with   common   dining-rooms,   libraries,    play- 

297 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

rooms,  nurseries,  and  kitchens,  will  revolutionise  the 
position  of  the  mother  and,  incidentally,  tend  to  a 
freedom  from  excessive  domestic  work,  a  freedom 
which  will  do  more  than  anything  else  to  give  women 
that  place  in  the  general  work  of  the  world  which 
they  are  at  present  demanding.  It  is  not  good 
that  an  intelligent  woman  should  give  up  her  whole 
time  to  the  care  of  a  single  house  or  of  two  or  three 
children,  who  would  be  far  better  in  the  more  varied 
society  of  a  larger  group,  which  could  be  more 
economically  and  efficiently  tended  by  a  professional 
nurse  who  chose  that  work  by  preference.  All  these 
developments,  eventually,  may  lead  to  the  disap- 
pearance of  the  family  as  a  social  unit.  There  will 
probably  be  no  place  in  the  larger-thinking  Great 
State  for  the  narrow  autocracy  of  the  father,  con- 
trolling the  individual  rights  of  either  the  mother  or 
the  child.  Such  a  unit  will  only  hamper  the  individ- 
ual, without  assisting  in  the  wider  work  of  the 
State. 

Here  one  must  end  this  brief  summary  of  the  ele- 
ments of  the  present  social  organism  which  are 
tending  in  the  direction  of  the  Great  State. 

These  have  been  grouped,  for  convenience,  under 
the  four  heads  of  educational  and  physical  develop- 
ment ;  the  collective  organisation  of  industry ;  the  dis- 
tribution of  excessive  wealth ;  and  the  development  of 
communal  rights ;  while  the  case  of  the  public  endow- 
ment of  motherhood  has  been  treated  as  a  special 
example  which  illuminates  the  whole  principle.    The 

298 


THE    PRESENT    DEVELOPMENT 

growth  of  internationalism  might  be  added  to  the 
list.  All  these  tendencies  will,  on  analysis,  be  found 
to  result  from  the  common-sense  fact  that  it  is 
more  satisfactory  to  accomplish  the  work  of  the 
world  on  the  co-operative  basis  of  organised  effort 
than  on  the  lines  of  anarchical  impulse.  It  may 
be  far  more  difficult  to  organise  the  former  than 
to  permit  the  latter;  but  the  manifest  possibilities 
of  the  former  will  continue  to  stimulate  the  human 
imagination  until  every  difficulty  is  overcome.  The 
organisation  of  that  "collective  mind"  which  will 
be  the  basis  of  the  Great  State  needs  an  educated 
people — a  people  who  will  work  in  unison  with  the 
next-door  neighbours,  the  next  parish,  the  next 
county,  or  the  next  nation,  whenever  there  is  any 
advantage  to  be  gained  by  so  doing.  The  vague, 
instinctive,  childish  antagonisms  of  class  and  race, 
and  the  sentimentalities  that  would  veil  the  essential 
brutality,  are  giving  way,  generation  by  generation, 
before  the  more  precise  and  larger-spirited  thinking 
of  the  new  time. 


A  PICTURE   OF  THE  CHURCH  IN  THE 
GREAT   STATE 

BY   THE   REV.   CONRAD    NOEL 
2U 


XI 

A   PICTURE   OF   THE   CHURCH   IN   THE 
GREAT   STATE' 

At  last  I  came  upon  the  Cathedral,  as  we  must 
now  call  it,  for  every  group  of  parishes  has  its  bishop 
who  is  in  more  than  name  a  "father  in  God"  to  his 
priests  and  people,  and  not,  as  too  often  in  the  past, 
a  feeble  person  remotely  overlording  a  vast  area 
and  following  instead  of  forming  public  opinion,  his 
mind  a  tangle  of  concessions  and  his  days  a  round 
of  trivialities.  The  people  themselves  are  nowa- 
days consulted  in  the  election  of  the  clergy,  a  cus- 
tom  which  recalls  the   choice  of  Ambrose  to   the 

'  This  paper  takes  the  place  of  a  projected  essay  upon  Religion  in 
relation  to  the  Great  State.  The  general  editors  of  the  book  were 
unable  to  arrange  for  a  comprehensive  discussion  of  this  important 
aspect  of  human  life  because  they  could  find  no  writer  at  once  in- 
terested and  impartial;  and  the  Rev.  Conrad  Noel  has  very  obliging- 
ly, and  under  a  considerable  pressure  of  other  work,  sketched  a 
Catholic  ideal  of  religion  in  the  Great  State.  Unlike  our  other 
contributors,  he  has  not  seen  fit  to  adopt  the  form  of  a  reasoned 
essay,  but  instead  he  has  made  an  imaginative  description  of  a 
visit  to  a  cathedral  in  the  year  2000  or  so,  the  basis  for  his  forecast 
of  the  future  catholic  teaching.  Tt  is  his  personal  forecast,  from 
his  individual  standpoint  as  a  priest  of  the  Church  of  England;  but 
many  will  agree  with  his  spirit  who  will  not  approve  either  of  his 
doctrine  or  of  his  ornaments. 

303 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT   STATE 

Archbishopric  of  Milan  by  acclamation  of  men  and 
women,  and  even  little  children,  and  replaces  the 
intrigue  and  secrecy  of  the  past.  Many  "Congre- 
gationalists "  welcomed  the  change,  and  now  exist 
within  the  Church  as  a  guild,  with  particular  methods 
and  a  standpoint  of  their  own.  But  although  there 
still  remain  certain  small  and  independent  coteries 
of  the  pious — and  perhaps  not  illogically,  for  their 
forefathers  became  separatists  from  the  Unity  of 
Christendom  not  so  much  in  protest  against  the 
private  patron  as  in  championship  of  the  private 
congregation,  holding  no  brief  for  the  common  peo- 
ple, but  only  for  the  "people  of  God" — modern  sec- 
tarianism has  lost  point  and  vitality,  for  the  people 
believe  that  the  Church  is  an  army  for  the  quicken- 
ing and  confirming  of  a  Kingdom  of  Righteousness, 
and  that  through  the  comradeship  of  arms  men  and 
women  attain  a  gracious  and  eternal  personality. 

To  the  majority  the  idea  of  "free"  and  competing 
churches  has  therefore  become  meaningless,  and  is 
only  upheld  by  the  sects  themselves  on  the  assump- 
tion that  Christ  did  not  found  a  Fellowship,  but  a 
number  of  sky-seeking  cliques  or  comfortable  ' '  homes 
of  the  spirit,"  which  do  business  as  drug  stores  and 
insurance  companies  for  a  restricted  clientele. 

Within  the  Church  itself,  however,  there  exists  a 
great  variety  of  ideas  and  a  greater  variety  of  wor- 
ship. There  are  to  be  found  within  its  organisation 
many  companies  whose  members  before  the  great 
changes  had  been  dissenters;   each  has  its  shrine  or 

304 


THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

oratory,  and  emphasises  some  one  or  other  aspect  of 
truth,  but  without  breaking  away  in  thought  or 
emotion  (heresy)  or  in  organisation  (schism)  from 
the  bond  and  proportion  of  the  CathoHc  ReHgion. 
In  the  Cathedral,  for  instance,  there  is  an  oratory 
dedicated  to  Wisdom,  containing  a  Ubrary  of  books, 
where  people  come  for  study  and  contemplation;  no 
public  service  is  held  here,  but  it  is  the  favourite 
meeting-place  for  a  Guild  of  the  Friends,  who  use  it 
for  purposes  of  silent  adoration. 

The  common  worship  of  the  Church  is  elaborate, 
for  it  is  the  people's  tribute  to  the  Supreme  Ritualist 
who  is  making  a  rich  and  complex  and  visible  world 
with  its  pageantry  of  days  and  nights,  and  of  the 
varying  seasons.  But  to  many  of  the  guilds  the 
ceremonial  worship  makes  no  special  appeal.  They 
are  present  at  it  as  an  act  of  Fellowship  from  time 
to  time,  but  find  their  particular  satisfaction  in 
simpler  exercises  of  the  spirit,  in  which,  indeed,  the 
whole  people  frequently  join. 

As  to  the  position  and  temporalities  of  the  Church, 
a  controversy  is  raging.  I  hear  that  only  last  week 
a  passionate  appeal  against  Establishment  was  made 
from  the  pulpit  of  the  Cathedral  by  one  of  the 
younger  canons.  The  Church  had  been  disestab- 
lished, and  to  some  extent  disendowed  for  many 
years,  and  at  the  present  time  the  churches  are 
maintained  and  the  Clergy  supported  in  different 
ways.  In  some  parishes  the  priests  work  "pro- 
ductively" for  an  hour  or  so  every  day,  giving  their 

305 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

ministry  freely.  In  others  they  are  supported  by 
a  voluntary  levy.  In  others  again  some  small  en- 
dowment exists.  Now,  a  great  number  of  people, 
including  some  of  the  most  lively  and  public-spirited, 
are  in  favour  of  complete  establishment  and  uni- 
form State  endowment;  but  the  preacher  of  last 
week,  who  voiced  a  vigorous  minority,  had  pas- 
sionately warned  the  people  against  the  proposed 
official  union.  The  price  of  just  government  was 
alert  criticism  and  eternal  vigilance,  and  this  criti- 
cism had  hitherto  been  encouraged  by  a  vigorously 
independent  Church.  I  have  no  notion  how  this 
particular  controversy  will  be  settled,  but  it  seems 
possible  for  people  to  hold  opposite  convictions  on 
the  subject  of  temporalities,  and,  indeed,  on  many 
others,  without  breaking  the  bond  of  Christendom. 
The  Cathedral  Church  of  All  Saints  was  the  old 
Tudor  structure  of  my  childhood,  but  where  was  the 
Society  for  the  Protection  of  Ancient  Buildings? 
For  there  had  been  added  a  new  Chapel  towards  the 
east,  a  Council-room  to  the  north,  and  I  noticed 
innumerable  other  alterations,  each  showing  de- 
cision and  individuality.  These  acts  of  "Vandal- 
ism" are  defended  by  the  present  architects,  who 
point  to  the  audacities  of  style  in  successive  periods 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  a  daring  clash  of  individualities 
and  a  supreme  harmony.  It  was  as  if  a  Great  Peo- 
ple, in  regaining  some  secret  spring  of  life,  had 
fulfilled  the  Unities  by  becoming  as  unconscious  of 
them  as  an  athlete  is  unconscious  of  a  good  digestion. 

306 


THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

The  old  niches  had  their  saints  restored  to  them, 
and  many  new  shrines  were  peopled  with  a  strange 
medley  of  figures:  St.  Catharine  of  Siena,  and  her 
namesake  of  Egypt;  the  Blessed  Thomas  More  and 
John  Ball,  of  St.  Albans;  St.  Joan  of  Arc;  the 
Blessed  John  Damien,  and  hundreds  more,  many  of 
them  unknown  to  me,  but  likely  enough  images  of 
martyrs  who  had  fallen  in  some  recent  struggle — 
artists,  artisans,  poets,  priests,  and  statesmen.  The 
inclusion  among  these  shrines  of  pre-Christian  and 
non-Christian  heroes  seemed  to  me  extraordinary, 
but  the  principle  of  this  People  is  to  accent  the 
vitalities  of  tradition  and  let  the  rest  go;  I  was 
reminded  that  one  of  their  greatest  theologians, 
St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  had  woven  Aristotle  into  the 
Catholic  fabric,  and  that  St.  Augustine  had  claimed 
Plato  as  a  Christian,  and  that  the  Catholic  Church 
had  baptised  images,  temples,  ceremonial,  gods  and 
goddesses,  into  Christ,  laying  the  whole  world  under 
contribution  in  the  building  of  an  Universal  Faith, 
and  adoring  an  everywhere  present  God  from  whom 
all  good  things  do  come.  Even  the  very  Christmas- 
trees,  with  their  gleaming  tapers  and  gaudy  colours, 
which  decorated  the  aisles,  reminded  one  that  the 
peculiarly  Christian  Feast  of  December  was  pagan 
in  origin.  Inclusiveness  with  them  springs  from 
no  mere  toleration  bom  of  indifference;  but  from 
an  adoration  of  that  one  Spirit  who  has  not  left 
Himself  without  witness  in  any  comer  of  the  earth. 
They  borrow  freely  and  absorb  into  their  own  re- 

307 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

liglon  elements  the  most  distant  and  varying;  and 
the  more  they  borrow,  the  more  unique  does  this 
religion  become. 

The  old  gargoyles  remain  untouched,  and  new 
monstrosities  leer  down  upon  the  passers-by.  Among 
them  are  the  faces  of  pharisees  and  sweaters  of  a 
past  regime.  So  vividly  do  certain  encrustations 
of  the  structure  record  the  struggles  of  a  darker 
century  that  they  seem  like  some  furious  battle 
suddenly  arrested  and  turned  to  stone. 

The  principal  porch  was  draped  in  deep  -  rose 
velvet  girdled  with  golden  cords,  and  against  the 
rosy  background  stood  dark  branches  of  the  yew 
in  wooden  tubs.  On  entering  the  carved  doors,  I 
was  at  once  impressed  with  a  sense  of  warmth  and 
incense  and  worship.  One  could  not  imagine  such 
a  building  deserted;  it  must  always  have  its  groups 
of  devotees ;  it  was  surely  the  temple  of  a  perpetual 
adoration. 

Everywhere  were  chapels  and  pictures  and  shrines, 
gay  with  flowers  and  glittering  tapers  pointing  like 
spears  towards  the  vast  roof.  Fixed  by  small  black 
chains  to  the  benches  and  the  base  of  some  of  the 
images  were  prayers  framed  in  carved  wood  with 
wooden  handles.  In  one  such  frame  was  shrined 
the  saying:  "I  give  nothing  as  duties.  What  others 
give  as  duties,  I  give  as  living  impulses.  Shall  I 
give  the  heart's  action  as  a  duty?" 

Many  are  attracted  to  the  Chapel  of  "Our  Lord 
of  Health."     Round  its  walls  are  pictured  scenes 

308 


THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

of  healing  from  the  Gospels  and  the  lives  of  the 
saints,  and  from  the  Annals  of  "secular"  medicine. 
Crutches  and  other  memorials  of  past  feebleness 
adorned  its  pillars  as  trophies  of  divine  healing.  A 
guild  for  the  preservation  and  spread  of  health  meets 
here,  and  its  members  include  doctors  and  nurses 
and  healers  of  every  kind. 

The  Chapel  of  Santa  Claus  is  the  largest  in  the 
building,  and  belongs  entirely  to  the  children,  who 
have  this  Christmas-tide  decorated  it  with  artificial 
flowers  made  by  themselves  and  with  sprigs  of 
holly  and  laurel.  The  altar  was  hidden  behind  a 
Bethlehem  crib  roofed  with  yellow  thatch  and 
Hghted  with  a  hundred  candles.  Here  is  held  the 
daily  service  of  the  Catechism,  the  children  choosing 
their  monitors,  and  even  having  some  say  in  ar- 
ranging the  details  of  their  worship.  They  are  en- 
couraged to  think  for  themselves,  and  as  much 
praise  is  given  for  a  question  well  put  as  for  a  ques- 
tion well  answered. 

In  my  wanderings  about  the  Cathedral  I  came 
upon  a  certain  oratory  with  many  kneeling  figures 
rapt  in  prayer,  penitents  awaiting  their  turn  to 
make  confession;  for  the  new  People  is  intensely 
practical,  and  their  religion  is  not  merely  an  affair 
between  the  private  soul  and  the  private  God,  but 
between  the  individual  and  a  God-penetrated  So- 
ciety and  its  minister.  They  believe  that  Man 
has  not  only  power  on  earth  to  commit  sin,  but 
power  on  earth  to  forgive  sin,  and  they  glorify  God 

309 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

Who  has  '  *  given  such  power  unto  men. ' '  They  think 
in  terms  of  fellowship :  goodness  is  that  which  helps ; 
evil  is  that  which  injures  the  community.  The  most 
secret  vice  by  decreasing  or  deflecting  the  energies 
of  service  is  a  sin  against  the  whole  family  of  God, 
and  requires  the  forgiveness  not  only  of  God,  but 
of  man.  In  an  anti-social  age  everything  from  re- 
ligion to  business  had  become  distorted,  neurotic, 
excessively  introspective,  but  now  the  sacraments 
were  again  the  witnesses  and  effectual  signs  of  social 
grace.  The  people  generally  has  regained  a  robust 
conscience,  genuinely  sorry  for  its  stupidities,  its 
cruelties,  and  its  egomanias;  but  ready  to  make  a 
clean  breast  of  them  and  shake  them  off.  Religion 
nowadays  is  more  deeply  rooted  in  the  eternal 
realities  of  human  nature  than  ever  before,  and  has 
inspired  people  with  the  paradox  of  humility  and 
audacity  which  one  sees  in  adventurous  lovers  and 
all  who  drink  deep  of  the  fountains  of  life.  They  feel 
the  things  eternal  underlying  the  things  temporal, 
and  are  in  close  converse  not  with  a  Jesus  and  Saints 
of  a  dead  past,  but  with  a  Jesus  and  Saints  who,  by 
their  heroic  struggle  as  recorded  in  the  past,  have 
won  to  that  heaven  which  is  close  at  hand.  Far 
from  denying  a  future  beyond  death,  they  hope  for 
it,  and  already  by  their  friendship  with  those  who 
have  passed  through  its  gate  live  in  "the  rapture 
of  the  forward  view. ' '  They  laugh  good-humouredly 
at  the  sick  people  of  the  twentieth  century  who 
blamed  the  Church  of  their  day  for  not  lusting  for 

310 


THE  CHURCH   IN   THE  GREAT  STATE 

life,  and  themselves  were  so  little  in  love  with  it 
that  they  rejoiced  at  the  prospect  of  annihilation. 
But  when  convalescence  came,  there  came  back 
with  it  the  lust  of  everlasting  life.  To  work  for 
the  good  of  the  race  is  excellent  enough,  but  the 
work  will  gain  in  vigour  and  enthusiasm  when  it  is 
no  longer  the  service  of  a  race  of  summer  flies  who 
are  to  perish  in  a  few  moments,  but  devotion  to  en- 
during human  beings  with  the  infinite  possibilities 
of  infinite  worlds. 

Had  this  People  developed  a  new  ethical  sense, 
or  to  what  extent  are  they  merely  reverting  to  an 
earlier  standpoint  for  a  time  engulfed  in  the  abysses 
of  Christo-Commercialism  ?  Two  or  three  things 
stand  out  clearly:  they  worship  no  barren  and  ab- 
stract deity  called  Morality ;  morality  was  made  for 
man,  not  man  for  morality.  They  love  and  worship 
people,  and  not  principles;  their  religion  is  the  in- 
timacy and  fellowship  of  friends;  their  casuistry 
springs  from  the  fount  of  worship. 

Their  teaching  of  the  children  is  firm  and  simple, 
and  meets  with  swift  response,  for  it  rings  true  to 
some  natural  grace  in  childhood,  which  is  always 
present  in  some  degree  or  other,  however  deflected 
or  overlaid  or  intermixed  with  alien  elements.  It 
was  through  my  presence  at  the  daily  "Catechism" 
that  I  began  to  see  that  they  are  convinced  of  the 
fundamental  soundness  of  human  nature  and  of 
the  divinity  of  every  human  birth.  Centuries  back 
this  conviction  had  been  acknowledged  as  an  es- 

311 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

sential  doctrine  of  the  Christian  Church,  after  the 
long  battle  between  Apollinarius  and  S.  S.  Hilary 
and  Athanasius.  And  for  all  this,  they  do  not 
minimise  the  distortions  of  mind  and  soul.  Evil  and 
grace  are  both  acknowledged,  but  the  generosities 
of  grace  are  suggested  as  natural  to  man,  and  evil 
is  regarded  as  the  inhuman  interloper.  This  is  well 
illustrated  in  their  use  of  the  word  "lust,"  which  has 
recovered  its  original  significance  of  the  natural 
bodily  desires,  hunger,  thirst,  sex  attraction,  energy, 
rest,  recreation.  Lusts  are  dark  and  distorted  only 
when  uncontrolled  and  indulged  to  the  injury  of  the 
community  or  the  self;  hunger  becomes  gluttony; 
thirst  becomes  drunkenness,  and  physical  desire  un- 
chastity.  In  this  connection  they  tell  the  old  story 
of  the  shipwrecked  swimmer  encumbered  by  his  sack 
of  gold,  asking  if  the  drowning  man  owned  the  gold 
or  the  gold  owned  him.  The  Church  rejects  the 
doctrine  which  would  treat  the  gold,  or  the  hunger, 
or  the  sex  need  as  inherently  evil,  and  children  are 
thus  taught  to  distinguish  between  the  use  and  abuse 
of  those  natural  desires  which  are,  in  fact,  believed 
to  have  in  them  some  positive  element  of  goodness. 
The  physical  appetites  are  likened  to  high-spirited 
horses,  valued  for  their  very  lustiness:  the  business 
of  the  driver  is  not  to  destroy,  but  to  control  them, 
and  this  is  also  the  business  of  life's  charioteers. 
The  Church  has  thus  reverted  to  and  is  now  develop- 
ing a  healthy  and  more  adventurous  element  in  its 
tradition.     Complete   suppression   of   some   one   or 

312 


THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

other  desire  is  counselled  in  exceptional  cases,  and 
such  a  policy  is  illustrated  from  the  anti-Oriental 
standpoint  of  the  New  Testament/  This  essential 
but  exceptional  abstinence  is  believed  to  have  its 
attendant  danger,  because  the  converted  sensualist 
may  invite  into  the  temple  of  his  soul  seven  other 
demons  more  deadly  than  the  first,  for  drink  has 
slain  its  thousands,  but  pharisaism  its  tens  of 
thousands.  The  puritan  convert  too  often  devoted 
the  remainder  of  a  maimed^  life  to  preaching  the 
gospel  of  dismemberment  among  the  sound  and 
healthy.  The  leader  in  so  un-catholic  a  crusade 
should  surely  have  been  the  fox  of  the  fable  who, 
wisely  exchanging  a  tail  for  a  life,  is  forever  counsel- 
ling total  abstinence  from  tails  as  the  duty  of  all 
members  of  his  magnificent  species.  The  present 
casuistry  does  not  discount  the  discipline  of  pain; 
but  no  road  is  either  to  be  chosen  or  avoided  for 
its  painfulness,  the  way  of  the  cross  being  sacred, 
not  because  of  its  difficulties,  but  because  of  its  pur- 
pose. Neither  pain  nor  pleasure  is  regarded  as  an 
end  in  itself,  and  it  is  pointed  out  that  the  Christ 
said  of  Himself  not,  I  am  come  that  they  might  have 
pleasure,  nor,  I  am  come  that  they  might  have  pain, 
but  "I  am  come  that  they  might  have  life."  They 
often  quote  the  story  of  the  artist  whose  soul's  de- 
sire was  to  paint  a  joyous  picture  and  bequeath  it 
to  posterity.  But  he  lived  in  a  Calvinist  city,  and 
the  government  threatened  him  with  crucifixion  if 

'  Matthew  v :  30.  -  Mark  Lx :  43. 

3^3 


SOCIALISM    AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

he  dared  to  paint  it.  If  there  be  any  other  way  out, 
the  artist  will  take  it,  and  he  cries :  "  If  it  be  possible 
let  this  cup  pass  from  me";  but  he  cannot  play 
the  traitor  to  that  joy  within  him,  which  he  is  to 
scatter  among  men,  and  for  its  sake  he  is  content  to 
go  the  way  of  the  cross ;  and  the  blood  of  the  martyr 
becomes  the  seed  of  the  Church. 

Deliberate  effort  towards  fulness  of  life  is  counted 
praiseworthy  and  necessary,  for  the  convalescent 
must  take  his  exercise,  however  painful  and  ungainly 
the  effort  may  be,  though  this  very  ungainliness 
should  remind  him  that  he  is  still  in  some  measure 
under  the  dominion  of  disease.  When  eventually 
the  convalescent  soul  by  conscious  effort  has  regained 
health,  actions  spring  spontaneously  from  a  rich  and 
genial  human  nature,  and  he  understands  the  mean- 
ing of  the  light  burden  and  the  easy  yoke. 

This  naturalness  and  spontaneity  they  see  in  the 
saviours  of  men,  but  everything  they  think  and  feel 
about  the  saviours,  they  think  and  feel  as  a  possi- 
bility for  themselves.  Jesus  Christ  seems  to  them 
more  human  than  humankind;  so  they  call  Him  di- 
vine. He  is  supposed  to  hold  the  key  of  an  over- 
mastering (eternal)  life  which  is  to  be  the  heritage 
of  men  as  they  emerge  from  the  half -formed,  mal- 
formed sub-human  life  with  which  they  are  often 
enough  content,  and  become  Man.  They  speak  of 
Jesus  Christ  as  the  first  fruits  of  the  human  harvest, 
and  as  the  first-born  from  the  dead. 

There  was  a  good  deal   of   controversy  in    the 

314 


THE   CHURCH   IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

twentieth  century  about  the  "finaHty"  of  Jesus; 
but  this  doctrine  is  no  longer  obtruded,  possibly  not 
even  believed,  not  at  least  in  the  paralysing  sense 
of  past  centuries.  They  do  not  separate  him  from 
mankind,  nor  from  the  heroes  of  men;  it  is  men 
who,  by  their  lack  of  life,  separate  themselves  from 
Man. 

They  feel  that  the  life  of  Christ,  as  contained 
even  in  their  written  fragments,  is  baffling  in  its 
many-sidedness,  its  richness,  and  its  ferocity,  its 
geniality  and  its  austerity,  its  tenderness  and  its 
audacity;  but  rather  is  it  His  life  as  a  present  God 
illustrated  in  that  localised  and  limited  life  of  the 
past,  which  is  adored.  The  orthodox  theologians, 
both  past  and  present,  have  not  expected  to  find 
everything  in  the  written  pages,  but  look  for  the 
extension  of  a  life  once  manifest  in  Galilee  in  the 
subsequent  lives  of  the  family  of  mankind.  They 
look  to  the  life  of  the  good  time  coming,  the  life  of 
the  golden  age,  "the  world  to  come."  Some  writers 
have  spoken  of  this  consummation  as  "The  Second 
Coming."  They  point  to  certain  sayings  in  the 
scriptures  as  containing  in  germ  the  later  doctrine 
of  the  Catholic  Church  on  these  points  of  faith. ^ 

They  do  not  pretend  to  find  in  the  written  gospels 
of  the  Christ  after  the  Flesh,  the  God-life  of  man- 
kind drawn  out,  extended,  illustrated  in  every  de- 
tail and  from  every  angle.  For  they  have  never 
been  bibliolaters.     They  have  never  thought  that 

'Luke  vi:  40;  John  xiv:  12. 
31S 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

ink  or  parchment  or  written  words  could  possibly 
give  full  expression  to  the  Word,  Who  Is  God.  Nor 
do  they  conceive  it  possible  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
the  Very  Man  of  Very  Man  and  Very  God  of  Very 
God,  in  a  ten  months'  ministry,  or  at  most  three 
years,  could  live  the  long  life  of  the  perfect  dramatist, 
the  perfect  artist,  the  perfect  singer,  the  perfect 
agriculturalist,  the  perfect  bricklayer,  the  perfect 
dancer,  the  perfect  statesman,  the  perfect  mother. 

All  art  is  not  only  self-expression  but  self-limita- 
tion, and  the  art  of  God  the  Creator  implies  a  re- 
striction, in  which  may  possibly  be  found  the  key 
to  the  problem  of  evil.  They  believe  that  God  the 
Word  or  the  "God  Expressed"  Hmited  Himself 
within  the  strong  channel  of  a  forcible  life  narrowed 
to  a  particular  purpose,  but  that  as  he  lay  a  babe  in 
his  mother's  arms  he  filled  and  still  fills  the  world 
with  his  presence,  ever  striving  to  express  himself 
within  the  limitations  of  this  or  that  heroic  being; 
hence  the  importance  of  seeing  God  in  men  and 
women,  and  of  the  worship  of  the  saints,  no  mere 
copies,  but  originals,  distinct  and  multitudinous 
facets  of  that  jewel  of  great  price  which  is  God. 

But  the  historic  Christ  is  the  norm  and  illustra- 
tion of  the  life  of  God  and  Man,  the  ever-present 
God  inspiring  men  with  the  same  secret  of  vigour 
and  originality.  The  saints  are  taken  as  illustra- 
tions of  the  million-sidedness  of  God,  latent  and  sug- 
gested in  the  life  of  Jesus  Christ.  As  to  images 
and  pictures,  their  scriptures  suggest  that  the  idol 

316 


THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

is  in  itself  a  thing  indifferent,  for  it  may  be  the 
splendid  representation  of  some  heroic  god,  or  the 
dark  fashioning  of  a  devil,  whose  service  is  that 
"Avarice  which  is  Idolatry."  What  gods  of  wood 
or  stone  you  make  matters  not;  the  God  that  mat- 
ters is  the  god  you  set  up  in  your  heart.  The 
Calvinists  never  made  a  stone  image  of  the  thing 
they  worshipped.  If  they  had,  the  children  would 
have  run  shrieking  from  its  presence.  None  the 
less  were  they  idolaters.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to 
record  the  difference  between  the  paintings  and 
images  in  the  churches  of  to-day  and  the  "religious 
art"  of  the  Dark  Ages.'  The  gentlemanly  drawing- 
room  Christs,  the  simpering  Madonnas,  the  feeble 
self-immolating  saints  are  things  of  the  past,  for 
the  portraits  and  images  are  brave  and  heroic,  and 
the  prevailing  conceptions  have  revolutionised  re- 
ligious art. 

In  the  huge  nave  Matins  was  being  sung.  Many 
of  the  Jewish  psalms  had  been  retained  in  the 
Liturgy,  but  to  the  Christian  psalter  had  been  added 
blank  verse  and  free  rhythms  of  later  date.  The 
chanting  by  men's  voices  sounded  to  me  archaic,  and 
I  was  better  able  to  appreciate  the  hymns  set  to  folk- 
melodies  and  sung  by  children.  It  seemed  strange 
that  the  first  lesson  should  be  selected  from  a 
modem  writer,  but  the  second  was  from  the  New 
Testament.  People  were  still  coming  into  the  nave, 
bringing  their  chairs  from  a  stack  by  the  west  doors, 

'Eighteenth,  nineteenth,  and  early  twentieth  centuries. 
21  317 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

and  sitting  where  they  liked,  except  that  a  pompous- 
looking  beadle,  gorgeously  arrayed,  kept  a  wide 
alley  for  the  great  procession.  The  decorations 
presented  a  daring  scheme  of  colour.  The  tall 
pillars  were  wreathed  with  evergreen  and  many- 
coloured  silken  materials;  between  them  stood  the 
bright  Christmas-trees,  and  over  the  entrance  to 
Chancel  loomed  the  Rood  with  its  Calvary.  But 
for  the  figure  of  the  Crucified,  and  for  the  pro- 
cessional Cross,  I  saw  neither  crucifix  nor  cross 
throughout  the  building.  It  was  through  the  grave 
and  gate  of  pain,  as  represented  on  the  Calvary 
screen,  that  we  passed  into  the  joyous  life  beyond. 
The  wearying  repetition  of  the  same  symbol  was 
held  to  mark  the  impoverishment  and  decadence 
of  the  Catholic  idea.  At  each  festival  an  appro- 
priate image  would  be  placed  upon  the  high  altar, 
or  some  picture  hung  above  it.  But  for  this  image 
flanked  by  two  candles  spiked  in  candlesticks  of 
crystal  and  silver,  the  long  altar-table  was  bare  of 
ornament  and  the  eye  was  attracted  not  to  the 
lights  upon  and  above  it  and  clustering  at  its  sides, 
but  to  itself,  enfolded  in  a  sun-like  frontal  blazing 
with  jewels.  The  chancel  was  hung  with  flags, 
faded  and  tattered  trophies  of  brave  crusades.  On 
these  flags  were  painted  various  emblems,  the  wheels 
of  Catharine,  the  gridiron  of  Laurence,  the  lions  of 
Mark,  the  spears  of  George.  I  could  see,  from  my 
seat  by  one  of  the  pillars,  a  side  chapel  with  a  sim- 
ple stone  altar  with  two  candlesticks  of  ebony,  and 

318 


THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

between  them  an  ivory  Christ,  Hke  a  young  Greek 
shepherd,  bearing  on  his  shoulder  not  a  lamb,  but 
a  goat,  a  symbol  of  the  final  restitution  of  all  things. 
Before  this  altar,  priests  and  laymen  were  vesting, 
and  here  were  congregated  boy  and  girl  choristers, 
acolytes,  taperers,  robed,  some  in  white,  others  in 
purple  and  blue  and  gold.  A  surpliced  priest  ap- 
proached the  lamp  hanging  before  the  high  altar 
and  brought  light  down  among  the  crowd,  the  men 
and  women  in  front  lighting  the  tapers  they  held 
in  their  hands  and  passing  on  the  light  from  neigh- 
bour to  neighbour,  from  row  to  row,  until  the  whole 
building  was  a  swaying  forest  of  fire.  This  cere- 
mony symbolised  the  fulgent  enthusiasm  of  com- 
radeship, kept  ablaze  by  the  handing-on  of  the  torch 
from  neighbour  to  neighbour  and  from  one  genera- 
tion to  another.  To  have  witnessed  this  wonderful 
sight  almost  compensated  me  for  the  midnight  mass 
of  Christmas  Eve  that  I  had  missed,  the  mass  at 
which  nearly  the  whole  district  made  communion, 
and  which  opened  with  the  procession  of  wise  men 
with  their  gold  and  incense  and  myrrh  and  shepherds 
with  their  lambs.  This  function  had  been  pre- 
ceded by  a  drama  of  Bethlehem,  acted  under  the 
huge  vaulting  of  the  Middle  Tower  by  people  of 
the  town  and  their  children,  a  drama  in  which 
humour  and  solemnity  jostled  one  another  in  strange 
congruity. 

The  Communion  Service  was  in  many  respects 
like  the  service  of  my  childhood,  but  instead  of  the 

319 


SOCIALISM   AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

negative  commandments  of  the  Jews  had  been 
substituted  the  positive  commandments  of  the 
Christians,  and  in  the  prayers  for  the  Great  State 
there  has  been  inserted  a  memorial  of  the  Confeder- 
acy of  Nations  composing  it.  The  doctrine  of  the 
Blessed  Trinity,  or  of  the  One-in-many,  runs  through 
their  whole  conception  of  life,  suggesting  not  only 
the  complex  personality  of  the  individual,  the 
trinity  of  the  holy  family  in  father,  mother,  child, 
but  the  international  and  composite  unity  of  the 
State,  the  many  nations  gaining  and  not  losing  in- 
dividuality by  each  generous  advance  towards 
World-fellowship,  by  every  cas ting-off  of  insularities 
and  parochialisms. 

Just  as  the  many  nations  are  confederate  in  the 
State  so  are  the  parishes  confederate  in  the  national 
church,  and  the  national  churches  in  the  inter- 
national Catholic  Church,  sending  representatives 
to  the  great  assemblies  at  which  presides  the  su- 
preme pontiff,  the  President  of  the  Eucumenical 
Councils  of  the  Catholic  Democracy.  In  the  prayer 
for  the  Whole  Church,  mention  was  made  of  all  its 
officers  chosen  and  consecrated  for  various  functions 
and  administrations  in  the  same. 

Beautiful  as  is  the  singing  of  the  Gospel  from  a 
lectern  down  among  the  people,  and  the  little  pro- 
cession which  precedes  it,  I  was  more  impressed  by 
the  procession  of  the  Offertory  or  Offering  of  the 
Fruits  of  the  Earth,  a  procession  which,  winding 
in  and  out  among  the  people,  gathers  some  of  them 

320 


THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

in  its  train;  the  laity  bringing  the  offerings  of 
Nature  and  the  works  of  man's  hands  towards  the 
altar;  following  them  comes  the  deacon,  his  hands 
muffled  in  a  long  silk  veil,  bearing  the  sacred  bread 
and  wine,  universal  emblems  of  the  products  of  art 
and  nature. 

Although  this  People  insists  on  the  eternal  values 
of  the  present  life,  it  seems  to  be  inspired  by  a  con- 
viction of  an  after  life  transformed  beyond  the 
capacity  of  our  present  apprehension.  They  do 
not  believe  that  the  dissolution  of  death  either  de- 
stroys personality  or  with  miraculous  suddenness 
transmutes  it.  The  majority  of  men  undergo  a 
process  of  purification,  being  cleansed  by  the  fires 
of  conscience  fanned  in  the  furnace  of  the  terrible 
God  of  Love.  They  do  not  think  that  this  process 
necessarily  takes  place  in  the  arena  of  this  earth; 
reincarnation  is  only  one  of  many  legitimate  specu- 
lations, and  by  no  means  a  popular  one,  for  theo- 
logians realise  that  this  earth  is  in  size  a  mere  speck 
of  dust  in  the  vast  network  of  worlds  that  form  the 
Universe.  They  no  longer  dogmatise  as  to  place, 
but  as  to  process.  They  teach  that  a  few  pure  and 
courageous  souls  pass  after  death  into  the  over- 
mastering life  of  God's  Omnipresence,  and  find  their 
heaven  in  co-operation  with  Him  in  the  work  of 
creation.  Our  entrance  into  this  heaven  is  barred 
by  stupidity  and  corruption,  and  for  all  there  exists 
as  a  dread  possibility,  the  outer  darkness  and  the 
weeping  and  gnashing  of  teeth,  though  of  not  even 

321 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

the  Judases  of  the  earth  are  we  to  think  of  that 
possibiHty  as  a  certainty.  The  presence  of  the 
whole  company  of  heaven  seems  to  pervade  and 
invigorate  the  people,  and  prayer  to  all  saints  and 
for  all  souls  is  a  never-ending  fount  of  energy  in 
the  life  of  the  Nation. 

From  the  moment  when  the  Child  is  initiated  by 
Baptism  into  the  life  of  the  Fellowship  until  the 
last  rites  of  the  Church  are  administered  in  the  hour 
of  death,  the  sacraments  of  friendship  are  his  nourish- 
ment, and  the  graces  of  fellowship  uphold  him. 
Present  at  mass  from  earliest  childhood,  he  makes 
his  Communion  only  after  having  received  the 
Sacrament  of  Confirmation,  that  effectual  sign  of 
the  royal  priesthood  of  mankind,  "The  Coming  of 
age  of  the  Christian."  In  the  Sacrament  of  "Holy 
Order"  some  are  consecrated  as  delegates  and 
spokesmen  of  the  whole  human  priesthood,  and  in 
this  parish  Mass  of  Christmas  one  felt  that  the  Con- 
secration of  the  bread  and  wine  at  the  hands  of  the 
bishop  was  not  the  act  of  a  sacerdotal  caste,  but  of 
all  the  people;  for,  as  the  great  bell  tolled  at  the 
supreme  moment,  not  only  the  congregation,  but 
the  whole  country-side  was  linked  together  in  that 
act  of  adoration,  when  the  everywhere  present 
God  is  made  manifest  in  the  friendship  of  those 
who  eat  and  drink  in  common,  and  in  the  nourish- 
ment and  energy,  the  gaiety  and  intoxication  of  life, 
as  symbolised  by  the  life-giving  bread  and  the  genial 
wine. 

322 


THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  GREAT  STATE 

In  spite  of  what  might  be  called  the  pantheistic, 
or  more  accurately  the  polytheistic,  elements  in 
the  religion  of  the  Great  State,  it  all  roots  down  into 
an  intense  conviction  of  the  Being  of  the  One  God. 
The  ethics  are  lively  and  practical,  because  Morality 
is  not  worshipped  as  a  fixed  and  abstract  divinity, 
but  is  looked  upon  as  dependent  on  and  in  relation 
to  people.  It  is  kept  from  becoming  static  and 
stagnant  by  the  Communion  of  Saints.  Behind 
these  innumerable  personalities  of  sinners  and  saints, 
personalities  ordinary  and  extraordinary,  there  is 
believed  to  exist  the  ever-present  and  personal  God. 
The  term  "personal"  is  bravely  used,  not  because 
His  Being  does  not  escape  the  net  of  all  language, 
but  because  He  is  felt  to  be  in  converse  and  com- 
munion with  men.  Transcending  personality.  He 
must  yet  be  appropriately  expressed  in  the  highest 
terms  they  know,  the  terms  of  their  own  humanity 
in  its  most  human  moments.  For  the  Word  became 
flesh,  and  dwelt  among  us,  and  we  beheld  His  glory, 
as  of  the  only  begotten  of  the  Father,  full  of  grace 
and  truth. 


THE   GROWTH   OF  THE  GREAT  STATE 

BY   HERBERT   TRENCH 


XII 

THE  GROWTH  OF  THE  GREAT  STATE 

Is  the  existing  form  of  state  certain  to  transcend 
its  borders  ?  Let  us  survey,  by  a  fragmentary  glimpse 
over  history,  the  ancient  majestic  process  of  polity- 
making  ;  examine  what  one  form  of  polity  bequeaths 
to  another;  and  take  account  also  of  the  profound 
underlying  and  unifying  force  that  the  whole  process 
implies. 

Next;  is  there  a  test  of  true  growth,  in  that  pro- 
cess of  human  societies;  a  touchstone  and  assay  of 
their  prosperity,  a  check  on  false  values  and  on  in- 
human changes?  Yes,  there  is  the  Family,  the  first 
glowing  germ-cell.  By  this  cell,  as  I  shall  show,  the 
health  of  the  polity  stands,  to  live  or  die. 


We  do  not  know  why  the  universe  is  what  it  is. 
We  do  not  even  know  Man  as  he  is;  his  nature  is 
only  being  gradually  unfolded.  But  two  centres  of 
being.  Life  and  Mind,  jut  out  with  incomparable 
clearness.  In  the  human  body,  they  emerge  as  heart 
and  brain.     All  hangs  on  the  interaction  of  these.    In 

327 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

men  dying,  the  pulsation  of  the  muscle  of  the  heart 
will  starve  all  other  organs — feet,  hands,  organs  of 
generation,  stomach — in  order  to  feed,  with  its  last 
exhausted  flutter,  the  consciousness  of  the  brain. 
But  these  two  centres  are  but  surface-indexes  to  pro- 
found universal  forces,  acting  through  human  society. 
Therein  we  see  Life  and  finite  Mind,  moving  in  the 
region  of  Anangke — that  is.  Nature  unguided  by 
finite  Mind.  Now  Life  and  Mind  we  judge  to  be 
different  stages  in  the  growth  of  an  "  omnipotential 
principle,  which  draws  its  whole  growth  and  con- 
tent from  its  environment."^  The  two  forms  of 
Life  and  Mind  are  both  always  being  urged  by  the 
pressure  of  this  principle  to  frame  wholes,  totalities. 
Life  and  Mind  have  jointly  the  remarkable  power  of 
successively  crystallising,  as  it  were,  round  hap- 
hazard points,  into  organisms,  selves,  families,  poli- 
ties of  all  kinds.  By  polity  I  mean  any  human  group 
organised  by  finite  Mind. 

II 

The  aims  of  civilisation,  or  polity-making,  may 
seem  confused,  but  are  not  so.  They  are  the  preser- 
vation, in  reservoirs  of  ever-increasing  group-con- 
sciousness and  range,  of  Life  and  Mind,  in  a  steady 
relationship  to  each  other,  and  the  training  of  them 
both  to  increased  force  and  completeness.  Three 
reservoirs  have  been  successively  organisms,  families, 

'  Driesch,  quoted  by  B.  Bosanquet. 
328 


THE  GROWTH  OF  THE  GREAT  STATE 

polities;  which  may  dissolve,  but  always  leave  be- 
hind them  spheres  or  basins  of  civilisation,  out  of 
which  polities  emerge  and  re-emerge,  like  bubbles 
from  the  moist  ground  round  a  spring. 

The  central  principle  of  things  requires  a  ceaseless 
effort  after  whole-making;  and  this  ultimately  im- 
plies, I  believe,  soul-making.  For  this  purpose  a 
ceaseless  interaction  goes  on  between  the  two  cen- 
tres, Life  and  Mind,  as  they  move,  oscillating,  in 
age-long  northward  and  southward  rhythms  as  well 
as  in  eastward  and  westward  rhythms  of  fertilising 
invasion  over  the  surface  of  the  globe.  The  moist 
ground-area  of  the  spring,  we  shall  see,  goes  on  en- 
larging. 

Ill 

First,  towards  polity-making,  from  cave,  marsh, 
lake,  move  Life  and  Mind,  possibly  out  of  promiscu- 
ous or  matrilinear  group-forms,  into  the  Cyclopean 
patriarchal  Family,  the  main  human  unit,  with  its 
naked  primal  economic  necessities — food,  shelter, 
warmth,  procreation;  Life  always  creeping  ahead, 
always  to  be  followed  by  wellings-up  of  IVIind,  in- 
tensifying the  Life  of  the  unit — the  Family. 

It  is  in  an  apparently  spiral  vortex-whirl  that 
Life  and  Mind,  the  kindred  and  antagonistic  allies, 
acting  through  the  sex-lore  and  jealousy  of  a  sire, 
create  the  Family,  and  thence  the  Polity. 

In  the  sea  octopus,  found  at  a  depth  of  fifteen 

329 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

thousand  feet,  shines  an  eye.  The  upper  half  of 
this  eye  is  an  organ  of  vision,  the  lower  half  an  actual 
lamp,  projecting  light  on  external  masses.  Both 
halves  radiate  backwards  and  inwards  currents  of 
consciousness  within  the  creature.  These  are  the 
triple  functions  of  Mind.  Mind  reflects  the  rami- 
fying movement,  the  fern-like  expansion  of  the  fibrils, 
veins,  tendrils,  and  armours  of  its  precursor  and  fel- 
low-centre. It  intensifies  consciousness,  defensive 
and  formative.  In  the  human.  Mind  embodies 
Life  in  preservative  habits,  customs,  morals,  totem 
food-societies,  by  co-operative  magic  and  religion. 
Next  it  adds  the  great  step,  Record;  and  this  Record, 
tide-mark  of  life,  scored  in  material  more  enduring 
itself,  Mind  learns  perpetually  to  diffuse. 

To  diffuse,  to  interpenetrate,  to  absorb  the  out- 
ward and  project  the  inward — this  is  the  special  power 
of  Mind.  True  inwardness  is  thus  the  complete 
grasp  and  absorption  of  the  outward,  and  the  pro- 
jection of  so  much  as  may  be  of  the  inward.  Mind 
renders  all  things  transparent,  as  the  soak  of  essen- 
tial oils  renders  transparent,  for  the  operating  sur- 
geon, the  tissue  and  cellular  structure  of  bone.  And 
as  Life  moves  forwards  in  its  shell-forming  and  polity- 
making  it  is  not  only  quickened  in  its  pace  by  Mind ; 
it  is  affected  deeply  in  its  own  nature.  And  there- 
fore the  polities  which  Life  and  Mind  jointly  create 
are  more  and  more  thoroughly  suffused  with  Mind. 
Mind  in  its  turn  grasps  and  intensifies  more  and  more 
of  Life.     There  follows  in  the  polity,  therefore,  in- 

330 


THE  GROWTH  OF  THE  GREAT  STATE 

crease  of  the  brood-care  which  we  call  education; 
increases  of  self -guidance  and  group  wisdom;  and, 
since  the  very  principle  of  Mind  is  diffusion,  there 
is  an  increase  in  the  range  of  the  external  structure  of 
polity.  Man  does  not  invent  the  State  only  to  satis- 
fy the  impulse  of  the  Family.  He  feels  the  impulse 
because  his  natural  destination  is  the  State,  as  Aris- 
totle said.  This  majestic  process  thrusting  up  from 
some  source  unknown,  but  whose  unity  we  frag- 
mentarily  apprehend,  more  and  more  numerous 
centres  of  nerve-consciousness  to  the  surface  of  the 
globe,  appears  to  be  the  expansion  of  some  pro- 
found universal  root  of  Self-dominion. 
This  is  the  open  secret  of  the  world. 


IV 

In  this  process  the  Life-centre  and  the  Mind- 
centre  in  any  polity  are  not  allowed  by  the  omnipo- 
tential  principle  to  fall  far  apart.  Where  they  do  not 
interact  the  polity-forming  current  ceases,  a  light 
vanishes,  some  low  form  of  organism,  of  which  all 
we  know  is  that  it  has  innumerable  nervous  centres 
and  some  of  the  philosophy  for  a  brain,  crumbles 
and  disappears.  There  is  a  decomposition  into 
sm.aller  forms ;  the  bubble  of  the  polity  relapses  into 
inferior  communities,  the  germ-cells  of  scattered 
famiHes;  and  soul-making  by  that  reservoir  stops. 
Yet  the  reservoir  has  bequeathed  something:  the 
bubble  of   the   Polity  has  relapsed,  but  the  moist 

331 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

ground  of  the  spring,  the  diffused  sphere  of  CiviHsa- 
tion,  remains  larger  than  it  was  before. 

Next  observe  that,  ahhough  a  vast  latitude  is 
allowed  as  to  conditions  of  Life,  and  a  vast  tolerance 
as  to  the  scope,  products  and  activities  of  Mind,  yet 
the  making  of  the  organised  reservoir,  the  Polity, 
ceases  when  either  Life  or  Mind  receives  mortal  in- 
jury. The  law  is  that  Mind  may  extend  and  ramify 
its  universalisings  from  basin  to  basin  of  civilisa- 
tion, provided  that  no  fatal  injury  is  done  to  Life, 
its  basis  in  forming  the  Familial  Unit.  The  final 
criterion  of  the  health  of  the  poHty  is  found  in  the 
health  of  that  Family  for  which  society  came  into 
being.  It  is  obvious  that  where  the  primal  neces- 
sities of  this  unitary  cell  are  not  satisfied,  there  must 
follow  a  dwindling,  a  kind  of  cancerous  break-down 
of  the  cellular  tissue  of  the  reservoir,  as  penalty  for 
the  infringement  of  the  law  of  interaction  of  Life 
and  Mind.  If  the  area  of  harm  be  wide  enough, 
the  reservoir  perishes;  and  reservoir-making  is  be- 
gun outside,  round  fresh  foci.  And  clearly  the  reser- 
voir may  perish  in  another  way:  it  may  fail  under 
the  impact  of  intenser  Life  outside.  But  these  im- 
pacts usually  infuse  fresh  blood;  are  absorbed  and 
revitalise  the  reservoir,  as  the  southern  Chinese 
polity  in  its  cul  de  sac  was  revitalised  by  Turki, 
Mongol,  and  Manchurian  blood  from  the  north, 
Gaul  by  the  Frankish  tribes,  or  Britain  by  the  Saxon 
invasion. 

But  the  point  to  be  observed  is  that,  whether  the 

332 


THE  GROWTH  OF  THE  GREAT  STATE 

reservoir  or  polity  decays  from  internal  or  external 
causes,  it  bequeaths  greater  consciousness  to  the 
globe.  Its  inventions  have  always  overflowed  its 
borders  and  remained  in  the  common  heritage. 
The  result,  therefore,  on  the  whole,  during  the  re- 
corded history  of  the  last  twelve  thousand  years, 
from  the  time  when  Nippur  drew  into  a  village  of 
reed-huts  among  the  marshes  of  Euphrates,  has  al- 
ways been  the  formation  of  larger  spring-areas  of 
civiHsation,  which  contain  small  sparsely-sown  com- 
munities with  a  tradition  of  finer  Mind.  Out  of 
these  spring-areas  arise  larger  poHties  of  coarser 
structure,  in  which  the  small  communities  with 
traditions  of  finer  Mind  have  a  gradual  influence  of 
permeation ;  so  that  the  ultimate  level  of  civiHsation 
and  the  ultimate  level  of  Mind,  of  the  new  large 
polities  is  higher  than  in  the  old;  the  two  main  dif- 
fusing forces  being  Trade  and  Thought,  issue  of  the 
Life-centre  and  the  Mind-centre  respectively.  For 
Mind  has  the  property  of  never  forgetting  its  own 
old  communal  levels ;  it  to-day  remembers  the  level, 
for  instance,  which  it  had  in  the  Athenian  polity. 
Therefore  in  the  new  polity  of  larger  area  formed  by 
Trade  and  Thought  there  will  be  a  steady  tendency 
for  Mind  to  rise  in  the  polity.  There  will  be  ulti- 
mately, after  an  interval  of  relapse,  a  more  compre- 
hensive survey  and  level  of  conception  than  in  the 
old.  Life  is  ever  being  sheltered  by  wider  inter- 
courses and  under  an  ampler  roof;  and  behind  both 
Life  and  Mind  there  is  no  long  pause  in  the  motion 
22  333 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

of  the  Omnipotential  Principle.  Stagnancies,  fluc- 
tuations, delays,  recessions  of  the  tidal  force,  it  is 
true,  there  always  will  be;  black  retrograde  periods 
such  as  that  of  the  fifth  century  of  our  era,  when  the 
Eastern  and  Western  halves  of  the  Roman  Empire 
were  a  prey  to  Goths,  Vandals,  and  the  Huns  of 
Attila.  Yet,  looked  at  broadly,  if  the  tidal  force 
has  receded  out  of  one  reservoir,  it  has  generally 
been  to  advance  farther  and  higher  elsewhere  in  an- 
other. From  climax  to  climax,  crest  to  crest,  of  the 
eight  known  civilisations,  the  wave-length  period 
seems  to  be  about  fifteen  hundred  and  thirty-five 
years.  But  the  main  depth  and  body  of  Mind  in  its 
commonalty,  upon  and  out  of  which  these  waves  are 
formed,  seems  steadily  to  deepen  over  the  world. 


Thus  the  first  foci  of  Life  in  Families  crept  out 
of  the  mists  round  the  common  Fire  of  a  village. 
Through  hundreds  of  thousands  of  years,  from 
periods  pre-glacial  and  pliocene,  human  life  had 
risen  to  the  cave-life  of  the  Veddahs,  and  then  the 
village.  Nomad  peoples  tended  to  fail,  as  the  hairy 
forest  peoples  tended  to  fail,  in  comparison  with  agri- 
cultural and  settled  tribes.  Why?  Because  the  settled 
folk  could  more  effectively  guard  and  feed  the  Family. 
Outside  the  village  were  the  formative  pressures  of 
Anangke,  duress  of  famine  and  fear.  Next  protec- 
tion is  afforded  to  the  huddling  villages  by  the  City, 

334 


THE  GROWTH  OF  THE  GREAT  STATE 

of  which  the  root-idea  is  Fortress.  But  the  Fortress, 
larger  than  the  village,  requires  more  food.  Fortress 
becomes  Market,  The  City  requires  a  larger  catch- 
ment-area of  produce  or  of  prey.  It  needs  also 
roads  through  the  region  of  Anangke.  But  primitive 
waters  are  roads  ready-made,  and  easier  roads  than 
land-roads.  River-dwellings  on  piles  also  afford 
protection  from  wild  beasts.  The  first  civilisations 
are  therefore  the  three  River  Civilisations,  Babylon- 
ian, Egyptian,  and  Assyrian,  in  the  valleys  of  Eu- 
phrates, Nile,  and  Tigris.  Their  polities  are  mon- 
archies, pyramidal  also  in  religion;  and  their  Kings, 
sole  ultimate  intermediaries  between  the  families  of 
the  people  and  their  god.  In  each  of  these  River 
Civilisations  the  Polity,  in  the  fostering  hot  current 
between  Life  and  Mind,  swells — hive-like — honey- 
combed marvellously  within  into  intricate  galleries 
of  crafts  and  castes.  But  even  in  remotest  stages 
of  early  civilisation  we  find  the  stability  and  size  of 
the  Polity  proportionate  to  the  rank  it  accords  to 
Mind.  The  three-staged  Ziggurat,  or  mountainous 
stage-towers  of  unburned  brick  (faced  with  kiln- 
dried  bricks  laid  in  bitumen),  and  bearing  on  their 
summits  the  abode  of  the  Babylonian  god,  had  al- 
ways, in  a  great  outlying  building,  their  attendant 
Library.  These  Babylonian  libraries,  certainly  far 
more  than  six  thousand  years  before  Christ,  like  the 
subsequent  Egyptian  libraries,  contained  text-books, 
school  exercises,  tables  of  mathematical  formulae,  as 
well  as  archives  of  temple  and  kingdom.     In  those 

335 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

River  monarchies  it  was  Mind  that  irrigated  the 
desert.  Mingling  with  the  Life-centre,  it  fused  and 
threw  up  the  great  composite  structures  Art  and 
Religion.  Religion,  at  first  a  mixed  fear  of  ghosts 
and  a  hope  in  the  power  of  ancestral  spirits,  finally 
expressed  Man's  sense  of  the  relation  of  his  polity 
and  of  his  own  soul  to  the  Infinite  power.  Religion 
also  now  lifted  the  old  local  tribal  gods  into  their 
niche  in  a  system;  into  their  footing  in  a  hierarchy; 
reflecting  the  shape  of  the  hive  in  the  spiritual  dome 
of  a  Pantheon  for  the  gods.  The  River  Polity  thus 
helped  to  spread  the  conception  of  one  God.  For 
instance,  the  unifying  of  the  forty-two  nomes,  or 
transverse  river  provinces  of  the  Nile,  under  the 
cobra -headed  Pharaonic  crown,  tended  to  draw 
their  various  tribal  animal  cults  into  a  theocracy 
of  one  King- God  who  was  supreme. 

Neter,  the  supreme  God,  remote  and  Almighty,  in- 
different to  man,  deputed  the  management  of  human 
affairs  to  a  crowd  of  minor  deities.  Sky,  Heaven,  Nile, 
Earth,  Sun,  and  so  on;  with  a  myriad  of  Spirits. 
But,  at  least  three  thousand  five  hundred  years  be- 
fore Christ,  out  of  this  crowd  of  animal  and  physical 
deities  a  unique  company  of  five  gods  and  goddesses 
emerged,  with  the  good  culture-hero  and  king,  Osiris, 
at  their  head.  But  what  is  the  peculiar  distinction 
of  this  divine  group?  It  is  precisely  that  they  are 
human,  incarnate,  a  sort  of  holy  family.  Isis  is  the 
sister  and  devoted  wife  of  Osiris,  coveted  by  Set,  his 
evil  brother,  who  murders  Osiris,  and  poisons  his 

2>i^ 


THE  GROWTH  OP  THE  GREAT  STATE 

son,  Horus,  begotten  after  death  by  Osiris.  Osiris, 
risen  again  victorious,  becomes  God  of  the  Moon,  of 
the  Dead,  of  Justice,  Truth,  and  ImmortaHty.  Isis  is 
the  perfect  woman,  ideal  wife  and  mother,  a  kind  of 
Virgin  Mary.  Thus  the  most  enduring,  lofty,  and 
central  form  of  divinity  among  the  Egyptians  ap- 
pealed to  the  affections  and  the  domesticity  of  the 
people,  and  took,  it  will  be  observed,  the  form  of  a 
family. 

Art,  the  other  mixed  structure,  also  arose  (like 
Religion,  expressing  the  whole  emotional  Man)  in 
poetry,  painting,  and  sculpture;  while  pure  Mind, 
in  experiment  and  Record,  sowed  the  germ  of  the 
sciences.  Record,  in  the  shape  of  law,  ramified  with 
the  honeycomb ;  human  status  was  slowly  exchanged 
for  contract;  the  ancient  familial  blood-rank  of  a 
child,  class  or  estate,  was  slowly  exchanged  for 
specialised  relationships  between  individuals,  de- 
fined for  practical  purposes  on  clay  tablet  or  papyr- 
us. At  last  all  the  streamlets  of  these  specialised 
relationships  are  channelled  in  the  spreading  arter- 
ies of  coded  Law,  as  of  Khammurabi's  Code.  Simul- 
taneously, disciplines  of  all  kinds  necessary  for  ritual, 
caste  and  craft  and  war,  appear  and  are  recorded. 
Every  social  channel  has  to  be  lined  against  the 
inner  friction  of  its  stream.  Every  repugnant  task 
which  is  necessary  must  be  enforced.  Every  thrust 
outward  of  human  growth  must  have  a  hardened 
surface,  armoured  as  the  drill  of  tunnelling.  Thus, 
through  the  efforts  of  countless  centuries,  are  born 

337 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

the  inward  and  outward  indurations — each  a  sign 
of  social  growth,  inward  or  external.  And,  of  course, 
added  to  religious  and  labour-class  disciplines  ap- 
pears, when  the  state  strikes,  the  massed  discipHne 
of  its  armies. 

Of  the  whole  ancient  Polity,  as  Richelieu  said 
later  of  the  modern,  the  apparent  essential  is  Fi- 
nance; collection  and  distribution  of  taxes  for  pro- 
tection of  the  worker's  means  of  livelihood,  and  for 
the  larger  livelihood  of  the  King,  symbolic  father 
and  priest,  chief  worker  and  apex  of  the  PoHty. 

VI 

But,  with  the  size,  wealth,  and  complexity  of  the 
State  Polity,  its  group  of  wants  must  expand;  its 
tentacles  of  ship-and-caravan  traffic  are  pushed 
farther  afield  to  gather  new  luxuries  in  new  seas, 
outer  lands,  beyond  the  area  of  self-sufficiency  and 
self-guidance.  We  know,  for  instance,  that  in  the 
third  century  a.d.  a  certain  Chinese  outpost  frontier- 
officer,  near  Khotan  in  East  Turkestan,  was  using 
Greek  gems  to  seal  his  official  documents.  Just  so 
a  thousand  years  later,  Marco  Polo  found  China, 
under  the  Mongol  Kublai  Khan,  even  in  her  signal 
isolation  behind  the  Gobi  desert,  the  sea  and  the 
Pamirs  and  highest  mountain  ranges  of  the  world, 
yet  flooded  with  Persian  luxuries  and  Greek  ideas. 
And  so,  far  earlier,  even  the  River-civilisations  found 
themselves  diffused.     Impelled  by  the  omnipoten- 

338 


THE   GROWTH   OF   THE  GREAT  STATE 

tial  principle  towards  greater  completeness,  the  River- 
civilisations,  by  the  traffic  of  their  many-mouthed 
deltas,  overflowed  and  are  suffused  into  the  larger 
Sea  civilisations — those  of  states  grouped  round  the 
Mediterranean,  Phoenician,  Cretan,  Hellenic,  the  last 
a  shifting  league  of  free  democracies  and  oligarchies. 
Athens  arises,  shining  exemplar  for  our  times,  served 
by  all  her  citizens,  not  by  deputy  or  merely  by  earn- 
ing a  livelihood  in  special  trades,  but  by  personal 
service  in  folk-assembly;  all  citizens  acting  as  judge 
and  jury;  all  citizens  as  soldiers,  with  no  relation- 
ships to  the  state  discharged  by  proxy,  so  that  each 
man's  body  and  sense  allied  in  loyalty  actively  to 
create  her  beauty  and  sustain  her  glory. 

Next  the  Roman  central  energies  radiated,  round 
a  Mediterranean  turned  Roman  lake,  and  spread 
undulating  power  round  the  Capitol,  as  far  as  from 
the  Tyne  to  the  Tigris. 

To-day  the  Sea  civilisations  are  being  succeeded 
by  the  Ocean  civilisations;  federations  extending 
around  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  basins,  inevitably 
to  be  knitted  by  the  interpcnetrations  and  depen- 
dencies of  trade  and  thought,  by  labour,  science,  and 
the  intercourse  of  universities  (forming  a  complex 
of  Life  and  Mind  centres  under  the  pressures  of 
Anangke)  into  one  richer  civilisation;  even  utilising 
the  Negroid  and  enveloping  the  globe. 

Yet  in  the  Greater  Polity,  towards  which  we  tend, 
all  the  old  intermediate  forms  of  polity,  with  most  of 
their  internal  class  and  craft  disciplines,  harmonised 

339 


SOCIALISM  AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

by  synthesis,  will  probably  remain  as  absorbed  and 
subordinated  forms,  national  and  municipal.  These 
intermediate  forms  will  contribute  structural  stabil- 
ity ;  and,  preserving,  each  in  its  rank,  ancient  ideals 
of  perfection  (as  Liverpool  might  take  Athens  for 
pattern),  may  long  and  nobly  thrive,  utilising  the 
personal  service  of  all  our  citizens. 

VII 

But  to  turn  back  for  a  moment.  Why,  if  Mind 
renders  Polity  stable  through  its  gift  of  Record  and 
consciousness,  did  the  Mind  of  Athens  form  no 
empire?  Why  did  the  Hellenic  leagues  fail  to  en- 
dure? The  Greeks  seemed  specially  to  have  come 
into  existence  to  intensify  and  express  what  I  have 
called  the  Mind-centre  in  polity-making.  They  are 
our  masters  in  polity-making  still.  They  wrote  its 
very  grammar.  They  made  Athens  a  walk  of  free, 
probing,  analytic,  experimental  mind;  washing  into 
the  inlets  of  all  life,  disengaging  the  ideal  and  essence 
under  all  appearance.  Their  greatest  plays  are 
sheer  rebellions  of  the  ironic  protagonists  of  Mind 
against  Anangke  and  the  settled  status  of  the  Olym- 
pians. The  very  decadence  and  rhetorical  de- 
liquescence of  their  famous  schools  of  discussion 
coldly  furnished  forth  later  an  organisation  for  that 
Alexandrian  university  which  became  the  prototype 
of  all  mediaeval  universities,  and  of  our  own  splendid 
foundations  in  that  kind,  where  we  alone  enjoy  some- 

340 


THE  GROWTH  OF  THE  GREAT  STATE 

thing  of  the  free  communal  delights  of  Athenian  dem- 
ocracy. For  Mind  the  Greeks  stood.  Even  in  the  con- 
quests of  Alexander,  when,  urged  India-wards,  by  the 
omnipotential  Principle,  whispering  "Totality!  to- 
tality!" he  spread  his  Greek  colonies  as  garrisons 
far  eastward  as  the  Indus.  For  in  time  these  made 
the  Greek  tongue  the  polite  and  learned  language 
of  the  whole  East.  So  that,  as  everybody  knows, 
when  the  wreck  of  the  Roman  Empire  left  western 
learning  in  darkness,  Arabic  translations  of  Aris- 
totle's Ethics  and  Politics  were  being  commented  on 
by  Mussulmans  in  Timbuctoo.  Greeks  also,  though 
as  mere  provincials,  supplied  the  language  and 
bureaucracy  of  the  Byzantine  Empire;  and  be- 
queathed their  own  popular  democratic  spirit  to  the 
eastern  form  of  Christianity,  itself  a  great  Greek 
polity.  But  it  is  true  that  Hellas  failed  to  form  an 
enduring  federation;  perhaps  because,  always  colo- 
nising and  centrifugal,  Athens  failed  as  a  political  cen- 
tre; perhaps  partly  because  the  age-long  rivalry  of 
Sparta  would  not  admit  the  supremacy  of  Athens. 
But  chiefly,  I  think,  because  larger,  lower,  and 
coarser  forms  of  Polity,  owing  in  their  making  more 
to  Trade  than  to  Thought,  were  required,  at  that 
moment,  by  the  peoples  round  the  Mediterranean 
basin.  For  the  Greeks,  Mind  was  more  tha'n  Life. 
The  Roman  polity,  coarser  in  texture  and  at  a  lower 
spiritual  level  than  that  of  Athens,  emerged,  instead, 
to  meet  those  wider  economic  needs.  Perhaps  the 
Family    stood    for    less    to    the    Greeks    than    to 

341 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT   STATE 

the  Latins.  Certainly  the  Greeks  gathered  round 
no  Osirian  rehgious  myth,  in  which  the  Family  be- 
comes divine.  The  Roman  system  took  as  its  core 
rather  the  Life-centre  than  the  Mind-centre;  it 
stood  for  the  hearth  of  the  Family,  the  patria 
potestas  of  the  remotest  Aryans.  It  radiated  afresh 
through  all  the  craft  or  communal  forms  derived 
from  Egypt,  Crete,  the  Hellas,  and  the  East,  the 
energy  of  the  primitive  hearth-fire  and  Life  force. 
These  practical,  hardy  Latin  farmers  founded  a  re- 
public and  an  empire  on  a  farmsteading.  Their 
colonies  were  not,  like  Alexander's  colonies,  mer- 
cantile, but  agricultural  garrisons.  Their  Polity 
grew  crystallised,  creeping  from  town  to  town,  from 
tribe  to  tribe,  throughout  five  hundred  years  round 
a  rude  life  at  its  roots  agricultural. 

But  by  the  roads,  the  colonies,  the  system  of 
Caesar's  legions  and  the  Pandects  of  Justinian,  the 
Roman  system  would  not  have  endured  alone.  The 
imperial  system  of  force  and  law  derived  from  Sulla 
and  Caesar  became  aware  that  it  lacked  that  rein- 
forcement of  kindly  brotherhood  which,  after  all, 
the  ancient  and  the  barbarian  had  known  in  his 
tribe  and  phratry.  Therefore  the  Roman  system 
supplemented  and  allied  itself  with  the  Christian 
reHgion;  a  faith  of  which  the  very  core  was  the 
apotheosis  and  lifting -up  of  a  human  Family,  as 
the  form  and  symbol  of  the  divine.  The  infant 
Christ  was  worshipped  lying  before  the  hearth-fire 
of  Vesta.     The  Christian  church,  thus  supplement- 

342 


THE  GROWTH  OF  THE  GREAT  STATE 

ing  the  patria  potestas,  was  the  resurgence  of  the 
Family  ideal  applied  to  polities.  The  Vestal  orders 
became,  in  lineal  succession,  the  sisterhoods  of 
Christ.  Scattered  ascetic  hermits  were  gradually 
gathered  from  their  Thebaid  desert  cells,  to  form 
communal  families  of  the  spirit  in  Monasteries. 
Later,  monks  and  friars  of  later  Christianity  under- 
took to  deal,  in  kindly  confraternity,  with  the  out- 
cast and  weaker  elements  of  society;  to  deal  with 
them,  that  is,  as  a  Family.  For  the  Family  is  the 
only  sphere  in  which  it  is  precisely  the  weaker  mem- 
bers who  receive  the  greater  love  and  care.  Thus 
the  Christian  system  repaired  and  supplemented  the 
natural  defects  of  the  commercial  and  military  State. 
The  Christian  system  dealt  with  the  childish  scholar, 
the  born  wastrel-beggar,  the  defective,  the  imbecile, 
the  sick,  the  enfeebled  through  age  or  infancy.  It 
not  only  created  Hospitals,  but  revived  Universities. 
So,  by  the  co-operation  of  strength  and  spirit,  the 
civil  and  religious  systems  of  the  Roman  Empire 
formed  the  wide  basin  of  European  civilisation.  The 
Roman  system,  assimilating  in  Caesar  and  Marcus 
Aurelius  much  of  the  Greek  culture,  had  assimilated 
also  the  new  Christian  culture,  and  projected 
mightily  and  far,  in  this  joint  worship  of  the  hearth, 
the  discipline  and  the  affection  of  the  Family. 

Now,  despite  the  rise  at  the  time  of  the  Renais- 
sance of  the  new  modern  nationalities,  we  still  live 
under  the  shadow  and  amid  the  fragments  of  this 
double  Roman  system  of  law  and  morals;  coloured 

343 


SOCIALISM  AND   THE  GREAT  STATE 

only,  throughout  Europe  and  South  and  North 
America,  by  the  local  custom,  common  law  and 
climate,  of  each  country. 


VIII 

The  next  main  contribution  to  group-wisdom  was 
made  by  England.  Her  special  contribution  was 
Representation — the  Representation  of  localities  by 
deputy.  It  is  true  that  all  forms  of  community 
were  historically  in  a  sense  delegations  thrown  off 
by  the  Family  unit;  but  they  were  delegations  that 
in  turn  became  themselves  castes,  bureaucracies,  or 
sub-polities  between  Family  and  ruler.  These 
skilled  specialisations  were  apt  to  become  alien  and 
impervious  to  the  appeal  of  the  unit  that  had  given 
them  birth;  and  with  the  increasing  size  of  the 
polity  the  problem  has  always  been  to  refresh  the 
central  executive  with  the  counsel,  and  control  it 
by  the  will,  of  the  Family ;  as  well  as  to  gather  the 
Family's  taxes.  Now  all  ancient  polities,  even 
democratic  polities,  require  the  personal  presence 
of  their  tax-payers,  if  consulted  at  all.  No  systematic 
employment  of  deputies  was  known  to  Egyptian, 
Greek,  or  Roman.  But  England  (which  had  de- 
vised already  the  jury  system,  in  which  twelve  men 
of  the  locality  represent  and  stand  for  the  communal 
sense  in  doing  justice) ,  from  Saxon  times,  applied  the 
same  principle  to  polities;  that  is,  applied  the  prin- 
ciple of  representation  instead  of  presence,  to  tax- 

344 


THE  GROWTH  OF  THE  GREAT  STATE 

paying  and  counselling  and  controlling  the  King. 
Herein  again,  as  always,  we  observe  the  economic 
need  creating  and  forecasting  the  trend  of  the  consti- 
tutional growth.  The  Saxon  Township  was  the  cell 
from  which  the  whole  organic  structure  of  our  House 
of  Commons,  or  communities,  has  expanded.  Each 
township  sent  a  reeve  and  two  or  more  elected  men  to 
the  hundred-moot.  The  hundred-moot  or  meeting 
in  turn  sent  a  reeve  and  four  men  to  the  shire-moot. 
Next  the  shire-moot  sent  (1275  a.d.)  two  knights 
to  the  Parliament,  while  two  burgesses  were  sum- 
moned from  every  borough.  The  House  of  Com- 
mons was  thus  itself  created  by  extremely  cautious 
and  slow  steps,  gathering  at  last,  after  three  hun- 
dred years,  the  chosen  men  of  the  shire-moots, 
borough-moots,  and  townships.  So,  by  represen- 
tation, the  Township  was  put  in  touch  with  the 
Crown,  and  the  whole  English  polity  grew  up  knit 
into  a  marvellously  solid  structure,  astonishing  by 
its  unbroken  series  of  cellular  connections  between 
the  people  and  the  executive.  But  this  most  an- 
cient word  "Township"  first  meant  nothing  but 
the  enclosure  of  a  homestead.  England,  thus,  in  a 
manner,  taught  modern  Europe  how  to  bring  the 
Family  to  bear  on  law-making,  in  the  extended 
modem  Polity.  It  was  a  device  merely  due  to  the 
increasing  size  of  nations.  All  modem  constitu- 
tions, including  those  of  Latin  South  America  and 
Japan,  in  this  have  copied  hers.  But  it  will  be 
observed  that  Representation  was  a  projection  of 

345 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

the  Family  by  deputy;  a  plan  of  which  the  defect 
is  that  it  does  not  require  direct  personal  service 
from  every  English  citizen  to  the  State.  Hence  the 
signal  lack  of  state  loyalty  in  modern  England. 

But  largely  to  extend  the  size  of  the  polity, 
beyond  the  range  of  direct  personal  service,  tends  at 
first  invariably  to  lower  its  central  ethos  and  moral 
tone.  Further,  the  sexes  lose  the  balance  of  their 
numbers.  To  the  far  new  frontiers,  to  the  fighting- 
lines  of  the  pioneer  against  Anangke,  disperse  the 
younger,  the  more  valiant  and  vigorous  men.  At 
home  remain  the  weakly,  the  street-bred,  the  com- 
mercial, the  sedentary,  and  above  all  that  great 
surplusage  of  unfertile  women  who  increase  either 
dulness,  luxury,  or  the  mass  of  prostitution. 

At  aU  costs,  it  is  from  the  group-wisdom  of  the 
Family  that  the  modern  state,  absorbing  and  re- 
placing the  supplementary  humanitarianism  of  the 
churches,  has  still  to  learn.  As  the  organ  of  the  col- 
lective conscience  it  must  replace  the  Church,  and 
must  include  and  co-ordinate  all  the  chance  humani- 
tarian philanthropies  hitherto  left  to  religious  so- 
cieties. Poverty  and  unemployment  must  be  utterly 
done  away  with,  or  else  the  starved  and  maimed 
families  of  our  present  terrible  devitalised  town  areas 
will  degrade  into  ruin  the  unthinking  state  that  has 
bred  them.  This  process  must  plainly  be  reinforced 
by  the  endowment  of  motherhood;  for  it  is  not 
through  the  facile  service  of  the  mother  in  the  fac- 
tory, to  which  she  is  forced  by  hunger,  even  during 

346 


THE  GROWTH  OF  THE  GREAT  STATE 

child-bearing,  that  the  greater  home  functions  of  the 
Family,  on  which  all  depends,  can  be  healthily 
maintained. 

What  mockery  is  it,  that  the  sheer  weight  of 
armaments  of  modern  nations,  threatens,  through 
the  weight  of  taxation,  to  crush  the  households  of 
humble  livelihood,  and  to  deform  the  Family,  which 
the  polity  was  originally  created  to  protect  and  to 
subserve!  For,  if  we  seek  Wisdom  and  Life,  where 
do  we  find  Wisdom  and  Life  at  their  purest  ? 


IX 

Individual  man  has  to  move  in  two  regions, 
and  to  draw  wisdom  from  each.  Two  teachers  only 
he  has,  the  Family  and  Anangke.  First  from  the 
Family  he  learns,  and  then  from  extended  activities 
in  the  Polity  which  is  a  flaking-off  from  the 
Family.  Secondly,  from  Anangke  he  learns;  that 
is,  from  the  hard  and  bracing  Universe,  unguided 
by  Finite  Mind,  whence  the  Family  itself  first 
issued. 

From  direct  and  solitary  contacts  of  the  mind 
with  Anangke  all  the  mystics  (and  every  man  is 
in  part  mystic)  can  draw,  by  intense  and  controlled 
meditation,  a  sense  of  cosmic  consciousness  and 
fellowship  with  the  roll  of  the  world;  a  joy  of  free 
kingship  with  the  elements  themselves;  an  ecstatic 
union  with  that  undifferentiated  Spirit  lying  within 
the  soul,  to  which  all  can  have  access,  and  which  the 

347 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

Indians  call  Brahm.  The  solitary  contact  with 
Anangke  culminates  in  Death,  supreme  Necessity. 

But  the  finest,  most  subtilised,  and  most  delicate 
forms  of  wisdom  Man  derives  from  the  Family. 
This  is  the  school  of  all  judgment ;  fount  of  pohtical 
measure  and  sense  of  proportion.  The  Family  lies 
upon  the  breast  of  Anangke,  but  differs  in  law.  It 
is  the  forge  of  all  the  loves.  Here  reside  the  central 
Wisdoms  and  Fires  of  Hfe.  Only  in  the  Family  do 
we  find  Ordered  Love,  the  perfect  combination  of 
the  two  centres,  Life  and  Mind.  Its  sheltered  at- 
mosphere of  the  passions  and  affections  introduces 
conscience,  and  alone  renders  morality  intelligible. 

Love  such  as  that  between  Man  and  Wife, 
Mother  and  Child,  Child  and  Mother,  is  not  emo- 
tional only,  but  also  the  supremest  kind  of  intelli- 
gence— an  intelligence  that  feels  forth  after  the  past 
and  future  of  its  object,  grasping  and  enswathing  it 
with  a  memory  and  foresight,  and  a  tenderness  abso- 
lutely limitless  in  its  dreams  and  reaches  of  intui- 
tion. To  the  depth  and  quality  of  this  kind  of 
understanding,  all  other  understandings  are  as  noth- 
ing. In  such  almost  silent  and  selfless  Love,  the 
blindly  moving  omnipotential  Principle  surges  every- 
where out  of  the  ground  of  the  world,  and  is  seen 
disengaged,  glowing,  naked,  pure,  and  at  play. 
Created  by  and  round  that  life-glow  one  discerns 
the  true  Family;  group  of  the  four  wrinkled  and 
elder  persons  nearing  the  subsidence  of  death,  the 
two  central  and  mature,  the  three  or  four  young; 

348 


THE  GROWTH  OF  THE  GREAT  STATE 

and  beyond  them,  in  twilight,  the  outer  kindred. 
All  political  thinking  has  been  obscured  by  taking 
the  individual  as  the  human  unit.  There  are  no 
abstract  social  truths  about  individuals.  Could  our 
custom-blind  vision  pierce  the  physical  surfaces  of 
society  to  behold  its  real  shaping  forces,  it  would  see 
cells,  cup-like  shapes,  of  group-consciousness  and 
emotion,  floating  perpetually,  invisibly,  over  the 
globe,  like  thistledown  over  grasses;  their  childish 
edges  touching  other  groups,  then  mingling  and 
floating  off;  while  the  parent  centres  shrink,  con- 
tinue a  while,  subside  and  disappear,  making  room 
for  other  cellular  forms.  Social  truth  is  what  is 
true  for  this  invisible  group  of  nine  Persons  of  both 
sexes  and  all  ages.  It  is  by  this  group,  this  glowing 
organic  cell  of  nine  persons  (each  no  mere  numeral 
of  the  statistician,  but  a  fountain  of  passions, 
dreams,  and  hungers)  that  the  nature  of  all  Polity 
is  dictated.  For  them  PoHty  is  formed,  and  if  the 
common  heart  and  will  of  that  cell  is  not  satisfied, 
the  polity  fades,  as  the  European  kingdoms  of 
Napoleon  faded.  Its  fostering  warmth  of  affection, 
playing  on  the  child,  is  that  which  forms  character, 
but  it  forms  more  than  character — brain.  For  that 
glow  has  not  only  an  emotional  effect.  Where  affec- 
tion is  absent,  the  whole  growth  of  the  child's  nature 
is  stunted.  True  growth  is  secret,  shy,  and  free. 
The  child,  highly  sensitive,  is  absolutely  defenceless. 
Therefore,  there  must  be  absence  of  fear.  Where 
the  mother  warmth  is  not  turned  on  the  naked  ten- 
23  349 


SOCIALISM   AND  THE   GREAT   STATE 

demess  of  the  young  child  the  fibres  of  its  whole 
frame  and  being,  frozen  into  timidities,  shrink, 
stunted.  The  strange  effect  of  fear,  then,  is  that  it 
cancels  the  free  joys  and  curiosities  of  the  newly 
searching  brain,  and  causes  it  to  withdraw  its  feelers. 
The  child's  being  is  thereby  impoverished  not  only  in 
emotions,  but  in  all  its  faculties.  Where  no  strong 
familial  and  emotional  glow  has  been  early  felt  I 
have  observed  in  later  life  a  poorer,  thinner,  flightier 
quaHty  of  brain  evolved.  It  is  the  quick  flimsy 
brain  of  the  gamin.  If  the  child  be  deprived  early 
of  the  fusing  and  tempering  effect  of  feehng  and  re- 
sponse to  maternal  love,  there  follows  also  a  perma- 
nent loss  of  equipoise.  Even  Natures  as  gifted  as 
those  of  Ibsen,  the  younger  Mill,  and  Ruskin  were  in 
consequence  peculiarly  apt  in  advanced  age  to  lose 
emotional  balance,  at  the  shock  of  unaccustomed 
sexual  and  emotional  explosions.  Such  often  be- 
come the  prey  of  sudden  attachments,  insane  and 
disastrous,  because  belated. 

Let  no  exceptional  bias  of  that  embittered  outcast, 
the  writer  or  artist,  mislead  us  in  this  matter.  If 
a  man  has  not  in  childhood,  and  for  years,  watched 
in  their  interactions  the  steady  group  of  the  Family, 
surmising  in  his  child  mind  the  thousandfold 
subtleties  of  their  invisible  intercourse  and  growth, 
he  has  missed  the  core  of  all  the  humanities,  and 
lost  the  scale  of  values  which  must  be  learned  in 
childhood  or  not  at  all.  Such  an  one  can  only 
deal  purbHndly  with  the  fragments  of  the  famiHes 

350 


THE  GROWTH  OF  THE  GREAT  STATE 

of  others.  Compared  to  the  childish  experiences  of 
love  and  intelHgence  felt  and  returned,  all  other 
experiences  are  shallow.  They  bear  the  same  re- 
lationship to  the  man's  later  acquirements  and  ex- 
perience as  the  enormous  submerged  achievements 
of  bestial  Man,  in  ascending  to  the  successive  levels 
of  speech,  fire,  pottery,  and  the  arrow,  bear  to  all 
his  later  inventions.  To  this  Vision  and  feeHng  for 
the  group  on  which  he  is  dependent,  and  from  which 
all  the  skilled  polities  extend,  we  owe  all  real  educa- 
tion. The  nobler  thoughts  and  emotions  are  group- 
thoughts  and  emotions.  Effective  religion  and 
ethics  are  results  of  familial  thinking,  not  of  in- 
dividual intelligence.  At  this  source  are  felt  the 
play  of  the  very  essences  of  Joy,  Sympathy,  and 
Discipline;  and  these  three  combined  are  Wisdom. 
Therefore,  it  is  in  the  inmost  sheltered  ring  of  the 
mother's  tacit  insight  and  provision,  and  the  outer 
ring  of  provision  by  the  father,  that  the  child  learns 
in  the  cross-currents  of  the  cell  the  whole  complex  of 
Life;  with  its  food,  toys,  ceremonial  magic,  exer- 
cises and  battles,  its  folk-lore  read  out  by  the  fire, 
the  wordless  comment  of  the  eye  felt  observing,  the 
reluctant  thrashing  held  in  reserve,  the  trade  and 
barter  of  childish  property,  the  joys  of  exploration, 
the  intoxication  of  carnival  and  mere  riot.  All 
these  enter  into  the  judgment,  and  absolutely  and 
finally  create  it,  and  all  its  later  values. 

The  political  economist  merely  darkens  counsel  by 
pretentious  technicalities  of  language.     The  economy 

351 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

of  a  State  differs  in  nothing,  save  scale,  from  the 
housekeeping  of  a  household.  The  child  also  knows 
more — that  its  mother  is  the  economist  of  spiritual 
forces,  shielding  and  directing  and  turning  souls 
this  way  or  that.  We  are  deceived  by  mass  and 
scale.  What  are  the  wars  of  States  more  than  the 
bickerings  and  bouts  of  children  ?  The  average  nat- 
ural man  acts  on  three  criteria  of  conduct,  in  three 
successive  concentric  circles:  the  familial,  the  equi- 
table, and  the  predatory.  He  applies  the  outer- 
most and  last  to  all  strangers  and  the  uncivilised. 
And  yet,  and  yet  .  .  .  seer,  prophet,  poet,  and 
philosopher  have  had  to  die  in  legions  merely  to 
drive  home  the  bare  fact  that,  if  the  world  is  to 
improve,  it  is  solely  by  projection  through  it  of  the 
Family,  with  its  subtler  and  more  intimate  values 
and  its  atmosphere  of  love  and  personal  service. 
The  State  has  to  learn  from  the  home — and  not  the 
home  from  State — that  by  the  ' '  kingdom  of  God  ' ' 
was  meant  the  spirit  of  the  Family,  propelled  through 
myriads  of  undulations  and  resistances,  to  the  end 
of  the  world;  there  destined  to  create  a  meeting 
and  equipoise  of  forces,  and  thence  to  undulate  back- 
ward, through  the  structure  of  all  polities,  spreading 
internally  its  strength,  its  discipline,  and  its  enlight- 
enment of  life. 


Since  War  will  certainly  continue  so  long  as  there 
are  tracts  of  the  world  not  effectively  occupied  or 

352 


THE  GROWTH  OF  THE  GREAT  STATE 

supervised  by  civilised  states,  because  till  then  there 
must  be  collisions  between  states  rushing  to  occupy, 
common  sense  would  seem  to  dictate  to  the  stiff  and 
snarling  Chancelleries  of  Europe  to  lay  aside  their 
canine  dignities,  and,  calmly,  by  international  com- 
mittee, to  plot  out  and  assign  the  virgin  soil  or  the 
fallow  areas.  Men  will  shortly  see  the  costly  arma- 
ments of  modern  nations  left  stranded  high  and 
utterly  extinct;  hulks  empty  and  abandoned  as 
those  jutting  ruins  and  mammoth  castles  that  dom- 
inate the  passes  of  the  Alps.  Till  then  all  polities 
will  be  arresting  their  own  growth  by  delaying  the 
cure  of  poverty,  owing  to  the  weight  of  competing 
defences. 

And  it  would  also  seem  clear  that  some  new  neutral 
kind  of  International  Power  should  be  called  into 
existence  (as  the  Universities  were  called  in  the 
Middle  Ages).  Of  what  nature  should  this  new 
Power  be?  It  should  provide  a  point  of  rest,  in 
neutral  zones,  for  the  due  economy,  in  the  common 
interest,  of  all  those  influences  which  transcend 
national  boundaries  and  for  which  frontiers  have 
no  meaning.  The  following  universal  interests  cer- 
tainly imply  a  universal  bond.  There  is  a  common 
need  of  food  and  fear  of  death.  There  is  a  common 
delight  between  nations  in  all  the  arts,  especially 
in  music.  The  intercourse  of  distant  universities, 
the  congresses,  and  co-operative  records  of  all 
scientific  bodies,  the  sweeping  collective  influences 
of    emigration,    the    implied    fundamentals    of    all 

353 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

high  systems  of  ethics,  of  all  the  great  religions 
and  the  missions  they  send;  the  ever-expanding 
network  of  travel  and  communication  in  world- 
wandering;  the  nets  of  electricity  and  steam. 
Above  all,  the  overwhelming  unities  of  commerce 
and  banking.  All  these  things  imply  a  streaming 
mass  of  universal  interests,  a  world-force  which  may 
be  gathered  and  utiHsed,  framed  into  a  new  Inter- 
national Power,  modelled  perhaps  on  Universities 
combined  with  Chambers  of  Commerce;  and  given, 
as  seats,  enclaves  of  territory  or  neutral  spheres,  in 
the  southern  and  northern  hemispheres  on  each 
continent. 

XI 

The  omnipotential  principle  tends  blindly  to  en- 
large the  size  of  the  polity,  seeking  universal  stability 
and  fertilisation  of  the  globe  by  life  and  mind.  But 
outward  peace  and  stability  once  attained,  the  size 
of  the  polity  should  again  diminish  to  Attic  limits, 
as  of  the  small  repubhcs,  within  range  of  direct 
personal  service,  and  of  the  powers  of  the  Family  to 
purify.  And  if  War  between  nations  vanishes,  it  is 
certain  that,  in  order  to  preserve  Life  at  a  high  level, 
severe  internal  disciplines  must  be  retained  in  each 
polity.  Anangke,  on  whose  breast  the  Family  itself 
reposes,  and  the  omnipotential  principle  behind  Life 
and  Mind,  will  see  to  that.  Youth,  which  should 
freely  pass  at  adolescence  out  of  the  discipline  of  the 
home  to  that  of  the  school,  will  have  to  acquire  all 
the   ancient   successive   indurations   and  discipHnes 

354 


THE  GROWTH  OF  THE  GREAT  STATE 

imposed  now  amidst  larger  opportunities  and  choices 
of  employment  afforded  by  the  expanding  spheres 
of  civilisation.  Above  all,  direct  personal  service  to 
the  state  of  all  young  persons  should  be  required. 
The  whole  youth  of  the  country  between  fourteen  and 
twenty  years  of  age  should  be  obliged  to  learn  some 
technical  pursuit  during  at  least  half  his  day.  The 
rest  of  his  time  may  go  to  leisure,  play,  and  Anangke. 
One  year  should  be  given  to  pass  each  through 
some  public  service  of  a  defensive  discipline,  or  a 
dangerous  or  a  repugnant  kind,  in  order  to  brace 
and  temper  Life.  Above  twenty  years  of  age  every 
individual  should  be  encouraged  to  choose  an  avoca- 
tion with  the  utmost  freedom,  remembering  only 
that  that  work  is  worth  most  to  the  state,  into  which 
only  a  man's  whole  weight  of  conviction,  from  the 
centres  of  his  being,  can  be  thrown. 

XII 

Finally,  given  the  preservation  of  the  Family,  the 
formation  of  the  greater  areas  of  civilisation,  which 
we  have  seen  is  proceeding,  clearly  enriches  the 
world,  through  the  influx  and  admixture  of  a  larger 
number  of  stocks  and  races,  with,  therefore,  better 
chances  of  cross-fertilisation.  And  all  new  inven- 
tions are  thrown  into  a  cauldron  of  more  manifold  op- 
portunity. The  growth  of  area  insures  the  destiny  of 
Man  against  adverse  chances  by  spreading  his  bases 
of  resource  and  action  wider,  and  by  drawing  trib- 
utes of  raw  material  from  vaster  orbits  of  climate. 

355 


SOCIALISM   AND  THE   GREAT  STATE 

And  yet  it  remains  that  only  in  the  person  of  great 
individuals  of  genius  can  these  multitudinous  ele- 
ments fuse,  by  a  detonating  spark,  into  fresh  in- 
ventions for  humanity.  After  our  debts  to  Chance 
and  Anangke,  we  owe  most  to  Genius.  We  owe  to  it, 
indeed,  far  more  than  invention.  It  is  to  Genius 
and  to  the  Family  that  humanity  owes  such  equi- 
poise, love,  and  simplifying  vision  as  it  has  attained. 
Genius  is  conscience  and  consciousness  at  its  whitest 
heat,  bearing  the  subtlest  implications  of  the  Family 
most  clearly  and  steadily  in  mind.  But  the  soul 
of  a  child  of  Genius  requires  to  live  long  encysted 
and  ensheathed.  Encysted,  first,  in  the  warmth  of 
love;  and  then  in  solitude,  as  were  the  shy  souls 
of  Shelley  or  Christ.  The  strength  of  Genius  lies 
in  its  ignorances.  For  this  child  is  Life  itself,  free 
and  pure;  older  than  its  father,  and  abler  to  resort 
afresh  to  the  primordial  fountains.  All  that  Polity, 
after  the  Family,  can  add  to  the  instinctive  endow- 
ment of  the  child  is  knowledge  of  the  technical 
languages  of  the  crafts,  and  of  the  various  disciplines 
necessary  to  deal  with  his  fellows  and  to  meet 
Anangke.  But  these  may  all  be  learned  in  the 
Family.  His  children  are  the  best  teachers  of  any 
father.  Therefore,  the  Polity  and  the  World  have 
not,  in  the  main,  much  to  teach.  Rather  they  have 
to  learn  from  the  ultimate  judgments  of  the  Family 
and  the  Child.  These  are  the  lawgivers  from 
whom  all  the  values  radiate. 


THE  TRADITION  OF  THE  GREAT  STATE 

BY   HUGH    P.  VOWLES 


XIII 

THE   TRADITION   OF  THE    GREAT   STATE 

Tradition  always  has  been  and  always  will  be 
a  dominant  factor  in  human  association.  Yet  this 
is  extraordinarily  disregarded  in  contemporary  dis- 
cussion; at  most,  tradition  is  currently  considered 
and  discussed  as  exerting  a  diminishing  influence  in 
the  onward  sweep  of  civilisation.  The  purpose  of 
this  paper  is  to  point  out  that  tradition,  great  as 
its  influence  has  been  hitherto,  is  manifestly  des- 
tined to  exert  a  far  greater  influence  in  the  future. 
And,  the  relation  between  tradition  and  formal  edu- 
cation being  very  intimate,  this  function  of  Great 
State  activities  will  receive  especial  consideration  in 
this  paper.  To  discuss  tradition  is  in  fact  to  discuss 
education. 

No  one  will  dispute  that  tradition  dominates  the 
Normal  Social  Life.  Primitive  men  found  in  the 
beginnings  of  speech  a  means  whereby  to  build  up 
and  transmit  from  generation  to  generation  those 
superstitions,  legends,  prejudices,  habits,  and  cus- 
toms developed  by  conflict  between  man  and  his 
environment.  Intensely  localised,  each  group  would 
have  its  particular  ideas  which  would  become  the 

359 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

substance  of  an  education  admirably  fitted  to  meet 
the  needs  of  man  under  this  form  of  association. 
We  see  that  such  an  education,  though  varying  from 
group  to  group,  would  have  two  leading  character- 
istics. First  it  would  be  limited  in  amount,  and 
secondly  it  would  be  stereotyped.  So  long  as  the 
relations  between  man  and  his  environment  are 
limited  and  unchanging,  not  only  must  there  soon  be 
a  limit  to  the  development  and  increase  of  tradition, 
but  there  can  be  little  further  modification  of  its 
character.  That  is,  tradition  is  the  outcome  of  re- 
lationship, and  the  Normal  Social  Life,  as  we  writers 
conceive  it,  is  correlated  with  a  general  absence  of 
those  disturbing  forces,  the  tendency  of  which  is  to 
produce  new  relationships  and,  therefore,  new  and 
more  elaborate  tradition.  Thus  we  find  the  Normal 
Social  Life  still  persisting  over  vast  tracts  of  earth 
to-day,  primitive  and  fundamentally  unchanged  by 
the  passage  of  time  and  having  an  extraordinary 
uniformity  of  tradition  in  regard  to  all  the  funda- 
mental social  relationships.  Fallacious  though  the 
clap-trap  talked  about  "unchanging  human  nature" 
often  is,  it  approximates  the  truth  when  applied  to 
communities  most  nearly  in  the  phrase  of  the 
Normal  Social  Life. 

But  of  course  tradition  has  never  been  absolutely 
inflexible  or  unprogressive.  Always  a  number  of 
forces  have  been  producing  new  ways  of  living,  new 
relationships,  new  modifications  of  tradition.  And 
if  one  believes,  as  we  believe,  that  these  extraneous 

360 


THE  TRADITION  OF  THE  GREAT  STATE 

influences  are  becoming  of  rapidly  increasing  im- 
portance in  relation  to  the  Normal  Social  Life,  it 
follows  that  tradition,  instead  of  disappearing,  will 
become  more  important  than  ever  by  reason  of  the 
resulting  modifications  in  its  character  and  range. 
Its  potency,  an  interpretation  and  discipline  of  re- 
lationship, will  need  to  be  increased  to  a  hitherto 
undreamed-of  degree.  Herein  will  be  the  essential 
value  of  tradition.  The  possibilities  of  a  Great 
State  must  ultimately  depend  on  the  quality  and  har- 
mony of  its  collective  thought;  and,  that  thought 
may  be  collective,  it  must  rest  on  a  broad  basis  of 
tradition,  of  interaction  and  understanding,  common 
to  all.  Unless  this  amplified  tradition  is  common 
to  every  citizen  and  to  every  child  born  into  the 
community,  the  epithet  "great"  as  defining  that 
community  will  be  misapplied.  The  development 
of  such  a  community  will  be  hampered  on  every  side, 
and  at  last  arrested  by  the  appearance  of  a  multitude 
of  sects  and  castes,  of  specialised  classes,  suspicious 
and  contemptuous  of  everything  beyond  their  own 
peculiar  circles  of  thought.  Sectarianism  is,  as  it 
were,  an  infantile  disease  of  the  Great  State,  and 
has  slain  hitherto  every  fresh  attempt  to  exist  of 
the  Great  State.  Mutuality,  co-operation,  efficient 
criticism,  and  subtlety  of  thought  are  alike  impos- 
sible; effort  is  fragmentary  and  wasteful,  and  the 
community  has  as  little  mastery  over  its  destinies 
as  an  ailing  child  unless  its  tradition  is  adequate 
and  universal. 

361 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

Now,  amplification  of  tradition  in  the  past  has 
always  been  accompanied  by  increasing  range  of 
intercourse.  Those  primitive  men  who  wandered 
away  from  the  tribe  and  survived,  and  perhaps  re- 
turned or  were  fused  into  some  alien  group,  would  be 
certain  to  widen  not  only  their  own  range  of  inter- 
course, but  also  that  of  those  with  whom  they  came 
in  contact.  No  matter  what  influence  brought  man 
into  touch  with  new  relationships — it  was  more  often 
than  not  slave-trading  and  war — this  would  be  the 
probable  result. 

Not  necessarily  was  the  bringing  into  touch  direct 
contact.  With  the  invention  of  writing,  tradition 
ceased  to  be  purely  oral:  henceforth  it  could  be  re- 
corded and  multiplied  and  transmitted  from  a  dis- 
tance, from  here  to  there,  and  from  one  age  to 
another.  Range  of  intercourse  widened  enormously, 
and  more  than  ever  it  became  possible  to  experience 
new  relationships,  as  it  were,  vicariously — a  thing 
already  possible  in  a  limited  degree  since  the  de- 
velopment of  speech.  Thus,  step  by  step,  tradition 
expanded  and  grew.  .  .  . 

From  these  considerations  it  is  easy  to  pass  on  to 
the  proposition  that  the  school  education  of  the 
Great  State,  so  far  as  it  enlarges  and  supplements  the 
oral  education  of  the  Normal  Social  Life — so  far,  that 
is,  as  it  is  an  adjustment  of  the  new  citizen  to  the 
larger  society  in  which  he  finds  himself — must  be 
essentially  a  tra'ning  in  enlarged  communications 
and  the  study  of  multitudinous  relationships — must 

362 


THE  TRADITION   OF  THE  GREAT  STATE 

be  essentially  the  imparting  of  the  Great  State 
tradition  and  its  methods  of  enlargement. 

Let  us  consider  briefly  the  methods  Hkely  to  be 
adopted  to  invigorate  the  general  process  of  thought 
and  to  organise  those  forces  which  will  be  carrying 
on,  modifying,  and  enlarging  the  collective  body  of 
tradition.  There  we  reach  what  is  probably  the  most 
vital  consideration  of  all,  the  problem  upon  a  solu- 
tion of  which  the  project  of  a  Great  State  depends. 

The  study  of  communication  in  the  education  of 
the  citizen  of  the  Great  State  will  probably  be  dealt 
with  under  various  heads,  such  as  language-training, 
drawing,  painting,  sculpture,  and  the  like;  mathe- 
matics, logic,  and  other  symbolical  methods. 
Whether  there  is  likely  to  be  one  or  several  languages 
in  current  use  is  a  question  upon  which  it  is  impos- 
sible to  form  a  judgment.  It  is  another  matter,  how- 
ever, to  glance  at  general  tendencies  and  from  them 
form  a  plausible  deduction.  Here  the  accumulative 
growth  of  disturbing  forces  and  influences  points  to 
certain  probabiHties.  The  immediate  and  most 
obvious  outcome  of  these  forces  is  the  extraordinary 
extent  to  which  man  is  being  delocalised  in  both 
body  and  mind.  One  has  only  to  think  of  such 
recent  inventions  as  the  electric  telegraph,  telephone, 
wireless  telegraphy,  steam  and  electric  tractions, 
the  motor-car  and  motor-vehicles  of  every  descrip- 
tion, the  ocean  liner  and  the  aeroplane,  to  see  how 
quite  common  men  to-day  are  enabled  to  sweep  out 
ever  -  widening  circles  of  mental  and  physical  ac- 

363 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

tivity.  Think  of  the  stupendous  growth  of  the 
penny-post  alone!  All  these  are  things  so  recent 
that  the  effect  upon  human  mentality  can  scarcely 
as  yet  be  beginning.  Bearing  this  in  mind,  it  is 
difficult  to  believe  that  a  multiplicity  of  languages, 
and  all  the  barriers  to  the  broadening  of  intellect  that 
such  a  multiplicity  implies,  will  prevail  for  long 
before  the  systematic  enlargement  of  the  means  of 
communication  which  will  be  a  distinctive  charac- 
teristic of  the  Great  State.  While  it  is  not  within 
the  scope  of  this  essay  to  consider  whether  one  lan- 
guage will  overcome  its  rivals  or  whether  there  will 
be  a  world  language  resulting  from  the  fusion  of 
several  existing  tongues,  it  should  be  noted  that  the 
substitution  of  one  general  language  for  the  babel 
of  to-day  would  itself  widen  enormously  the  range 
of  a  general  intercourse  and  tradition.  In  this  con- 
nection we  may  remember  that  the  Great  State  has 
been  defined  as  a  social  system  world-wide  in  its 
interests  and  outlook.  Language- teaching  would  be 
greatly  simplified.  Having  but  one  language  to 
learn,  there  would  be  some  prospect  of  the  average 
citizen  acquiring  a  really  comprehensive  knowledge 
of  his  tongue,  which  is  far  from  being  the  case  in 
any  community  to-day.  How  many  contemporary 
English-speaking  people  know  more  than  a  tithe  of 
their  own  language  ?  Even  the  little  knowledge  they 
have  is  vague  and  misapprehensive  to  an  astonishing 
degree.  Much  muddled  thought  in  contemporary 
life  springs  from  an  imperfect  apprehension  of  the 

364 


THE   TRADITION   OF  THE   GREAT  STATE 

written  and  spoken  language.  No  attempt  is  made 
to  provide  our  youth  with  a  liberally  inclusive 
vocabulary.  One's  knowledge  of  English  is  often 
found  on  examination  to  be — no  other  word  seems 
so  apposite — jerry  built.  New  words  are  acquired  at 
random  through  reading  and  intercourse,  a  loose  and 
distorted  significance  often  being  gathered  from  the 
context. 

Language-training,  then,  must  involve  the  acquisi- 
tion of  a  vocabulary  of  the  greatest  possible  content, 
each  word  in  which  must  be  thoroughly  understood 
if  such  training  is  not  to  fail  of  its  essential  purpose, 
and  through  that  work  of  definition  and  enlargement 
the  amplification  of  tradition  and  thought  to  more 
and  more  spacious  horizons,  and  the  bringing  of 
every  citizen  into  understanding  contact  with  that 
tradition.  As  to  drawing  and  music,  it  is  possible 
these  will  be  taught  chiefly  as  a  means  of  expressing 
thoughts  and  emotions  which  cannot  be  communi- 
cated in  words.  Again,  mathematics  resolves  on 
analysis  into  a  system  of  symbol  communication. 
Consideration  will  presently  be  given  to  the  idea — 
glanced  at  in  the  opening  essay — of  a  change  in  oc- 
cupation being  normal  to  the  life  of  every  citizen. 
Here  it  may  be  remarked  that  changes  of  occupa- 
tion would  be  greatly  facilitated  by  a  wide-spread 
and  thorough  knowledge  of  mathematics,  since  the 
occupations  involving  such  a  knowledge  form  a  con- 
siderable portion  of  present-day  activities.  No  one 
can  hope  to  be  a  competent  astronomer  without  a 

24  365 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

knowledge  of  mathematics.  Most  of  the  physical 
sciences  require  its  aid.  Even  music  involves 
mathematics  in  its  last  analysis.  Great  armies  of 
people  calHng  themselves  engineers  would  be  un- 
able to  achieve  their  ends  without  this  science,  and 
everjrwhere  we  find  a  rapidly  increasing  number  of 
men  engaged  in  physical  research  and  the  application 
of  scientific  deductions  to  technical  ends,  the  quality 
of  the  results  being  commensurate  with  the  mathe- 
matical knowledge  possessed  by  those  carrying  out 
the  investigations.  An  endless  diversity  of  intricate 
machinery  grows  and  spreads  about  the  earth,  and 
a  mathematician  has  taken  a  part  in  the  evolution 
of  every  machine  that  is  well  proportioned  and  care- 
fully designed.  Even  to-day  people  ignorant  of 
mathematics  show  a  disposition  towards  either  an 
ignorant  hatred  or  a  superstitious  awe  of  most  of 
the  beautiful  apparatus  that  binds  our  civiHsation 
together. 

A  superficial  observer  might  argue  that  with  the 
growth  of  knowledge  standardisation  of  machinery 
and  formulas  will  ensue  to  such  an  extent  that  a 
general  and  advanced  knowledge  of  mathematics 
will  be  unnecessary.  No  such  hope  is  supported  by 
the  tendencies  of  contemporary  engineering.  The 
nearer  the  approach  to  perfection  in  any  machine, 
the  greater  the  subtlety  and  refinement  of  calcu- 
lation required.  Moreover,  machines  no  sooner 
approach  the  measure  of  perfection  possible  to 
them  than  some  new  discovery  is  made  which  ren- 

366 


THE   TRADITION  OF  THE  GREAT  STATE 

ders  the  whole  design  of  that  machine  obsolescent. 
A  good  example  of  this  is  the  present  partial  replace- 
ment of  reciprocating  steam-engines  by  the  steam- 
turbine,  which  involves  a  whole  host  of  new  and 
intricate  calculations.  The  increasing  application  of 
internal-combustion  engines  to  ship-propulsion  and 
the  coming  of  the  aeroplane  place  vast  new  fields  of 
research  at  the  disposal  of  the  engineer  with  a  knowl- 
edge of  mathematics ;  and  it  may  be  that  engineering 
problems  will  continue  to  increase  in  complexity  and 
in  universality  of  interest  till  at  last  our  remote 
progeny  will  be  within  reach  of  the  possibility  of  a 
system  of  controls  of  the  earth's  velocity,  and  will 
steer  our  planet  nearer  and  nearer  the  sun  as  its  heat 
and  splendour  wane.  .  .  .  But  I  have  wandered  away 
from  my  point,  which  is  that  mathematics,  together 
with  language-training  and  those  activities  of  expres- 
sion usually  referred  to  collectively  as  "art,"  will 
form  the  necessary  basis  of  education  in  the  Great 
State — not  the  education,  but  the  basis  and  means 
of  education.  To  consider  these  fundamentals  in 
greater  detail  would  be  to  pass  beyond  the  bounds  of 
this  essay.  Let  me,  therefore,  return  now  to  a  more 
general  consideration  of  tradition  in  relation  to  the 
Great  State. 

It  should,  of  course,  be  remembered  that  while 
the  leading  characteristic  of  tradition  in  the  future 
will  be  its  insistence  on  personal  adaptability  and  its 
secular  modification  and  development,  there  must 
always  be  a  group  of  ideas  that  will  persevere  over 

367 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

long  periods  practically  unchanged.  Many  of  the 
needs  of  men  are  long-lived,  and  it  is  an  open  ques- 
tion whether  most  if  not  all  of  our  present-day  tradi- 
tions will  not  go  on  to  a  fuller  and  completer  influence 
in  the  lives  of  the  citizens  of  the  Great  State.  That 
large  body  of  tradition  we  speak  of  as  Christianity, 
for  example,  may  conceivably  serve  as  the  basis  of  the 
moral  tradition  in  the  Great  State.  This  matter  is, 
I  believe,  to  be  discussed  more  fully  in  another 
paper  in  this  book,  but  the  present  writer  now  ven- 
tures to  offer  a  few  remarks  that  seem  to  fall  within 
his  scope.  In  many  ways  he  admits  Christian  tra- 
dition has  been  a  beneficial  factor  in  our  evolution. 
Its  teaching  of  love  and  concord  is  of  the  very  essence 
of  the  Great  State.  Whatever  broadens  the  basis  of 
sympathy  and  mutual  understanding  is  a  force 
operating  in  the  constructive  direction,  and  so  it 
would  seem  probable  that  Christianity  will  at  least 
survive  in  its  spirit  and  intermingle  with  the  more 
elaborate  traditions  of  the  future.  In  no  case  can  a 
tradition  disappear  without  leaving  behind  it  some 
effect  or  influence.  But  this  is  far  from  asserting 
that  there  need  be  or  will  be  a  definite  survival  of 
Christianity  as  such.  Contemporary  Christianity 
must  purge  itself  from  a  multitude  of  defects  before  it 
can  possibly  be  acceptable  to  the  clear-headed  men 
who  will  be  the  normal  citizens  of  the  Great  State. 
A  mere  spirit  of  co-operation  alone  can  never  be  all- 
sufficing  for  the  religious  basis  of  tradition.  The 
Great  State  will  be  comjjlex  beyond  all  precedent; 

368 


THE  TRADITION   OF  THE  GREAT  STATE 

and  that  he  may  cope  successfully  with  these  com- 
plexities, the  average  citizen  must  be  trained  to  think 
clearly  and  exhaustively,  and  be  given  a  wealth  of 
tradition  for  his  guidance  multifarious  beyond  any 
the  world  has  yet  produced.  Christianity  as  we 
know  it  at  present  makes  no  insistence  upon  under- 
standing and  mental  alertness  as  duties,  nor  upon 
the  supreme  necessity  of  thoroughness  in  thought 
and  work.  It  is  not  a  critical  religion ;  it  is  emotion- 
ally sound,  perhaps,  but  critically  careless,  and  the 
vital  preservative  of  right  in  a  complex  situation  is  a 
critical  faculty  highly  stimulated  and  fed. 

It  would  be  impertinent  to  discuss  so  detailed 
a  thing  as  the  probable  tradition  of  the  future  in 
relation  to  moral  ends.  But  it  seems  clear  that  we 
have  to  look  rather  to  a  living  literature  and  drama, 
and  it  may  be  to  a  living  pulpit  for  that  perpetual 
stream  of  criticism  which  is  the  life-blood  of  a  great 
community,  which  indeed  must  be  deliberately 
fostered  with  a  view  to  the  continual  reinvigoration 
of  tradition  and  thought  if  the  Great  State  is  to 
remain  in  health.  Quite  possibly  there  will  be  no 
definite  "moral"  teaching  by  way  of  precept  in  the 
Great  State  in  the  sense  in  which  "moral"  is  com- 
monly understood  to-day.  The  tendency  of  liberal 
thought  to-day  seems  to  be  altogether  away  from 
definite  moral  controls  towards  a  latitude  which 
implies  alternately  that  relationship  should  be 
judged  upon  its  merits.  We  are  slowly  learning 
that  no  moral  code  can  be  framed  of  general  appli- 

369 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

cation  without  a  vast  amount  of  limitation  and 
injustice  in  individual  cases.  The  writer  believes 
that  if  the  Great  State  is  to  be  possible  at  all,  the 
traditional  atmosphere  surrounding  each  individual, 
from  his  youth  up,  must  be  such  that  a  sense  of 
social  conduct  will  become  intuitive.  He  will  do 
right  because  his  atmosphere  is  right,  and  not  because 
his  definite  instructions  are  right.  Meanwhile,  on 
our  way  to  the  Great  State,  all  moral  laws  and  judg- 
ments, all  arbitrary  pronouncements  regarding  moral 
questions,  must  be  submitted  without  bigotry  and 
without  prejudice  to  detailed  scrutiny  and  criticism. 

The  age  in  which  we  live  is  characterised  by  the 
unprecedented  intricacy  of  its  relationships.  Com- 
plex problems  face  us  on  every  side.  We  are,  as  it 
were,  entangled  in  a  net,  and  in  the  measure  that  our 
schemes  of  extrication  are  dully  conceived,  carelessly 
and  weakly  planned,  we  shall  be  more  and  more 
hopelessly  involved.  Never  was  the  need  for  pene- 
trating analysis  and  criticism  so  pressing.  Con- 
sider, for  instance,  the  problem  of  the  ofBcial  and  his 
relationship  to  the  normal  citizen — all  the  possi- 
bilities of  demoralisation  by  office  and  the  loss  of 
sympathy  of  the  citizen  towards  the  official.  How 
will  criticism,  aided  by  a  fund  of  spacious  tradition, 
be  directed  to  the  solution  of  such  problems  as  these  ? 

Whatever  demoralisation  takes  place  in  an  official 
is  partly  due  to  the  fact  that  he  is  a  specialist — that 
is,  a  human  being  who  has  narrowed  the  sphere  of 
his  activity  at  the  expense  of  his  social  instincts, 

370 


THE  TRADITION  OF  THE  GREAT  STATE 

thereby  becoming  but  a  fraction  of  a  man.  He 
sees  a  field  of  activities  as  brightly  lit,  perhaps, 
but  as  limited  as  the  field  of  a  microscope;  and  not 
infrequently  it  is  as  though  the  microscope  was  a 
little  out  of  focus.  There  is  a  blurring  as  of  things 
too  close  to  the  eyes  to  be  distinctly  seen.  More- 
over, office  usually  implies  a  power  over  his  fellows 
which  inevitably  breeds  first  pride  and  then  corrup- 
tion in  little  minds.  Speaking  generally,  an  official's 
pleasure  in  the  direction  and  regulation  of  other 
people's  lives  is  inversely  proportional  to  his  mental 
capacity  and  range.  Amplification  of  tradition  should 
therefore  carry  us  at  least  half-way  to  a  solution  of 
this  problem.  Let  it  be  granted  that  every  child  will 
acquire  from  his  parents,  his  teachers,  and  his  fellow- 
creatures  a  spacious  and  comprehensive  outlook  on 
life  in  all  its  manifold  aspects  and  relationships,  and 
it  follows  that  the  suspicions,  prejudices,  jealousies, 
the  lack  of  sympathy  and  of  generosity  of  dealing 
Vv^hich  are  too  often  the  concomitants  of  officialdom 
to-day,  will  be  almost  non-existent  in  the  Great 
State.  It  is  conceivable  that  constitutional  methods 
such  as  change  of  office,  short  terms  of  office,  would 
suffice  to  eliminate  whatever  remains  of  this,  the 
supreme  difficulty  of  all  constructive  projects. 

And  here  perhaps  I  may  venture  to  offer  a  few 
remarks  upon  specialists  and  specialisation  in 
general. 

It  is  a  characteristic  of  specialisation  that  it 
encourages   the   fragmentation   of   human   thought 

371 


SOCIALISM   AND   THE   GREAT  STATE 

and  effort.  Essentially  it  belongs  to  the  era  of 
localised  tradition  and  limited  outlook  and  is  every- 
where reflected  in  the  castes,  cliques,  cults,  and 
classes  which  are  so  familiar  a  feature  of  the  earlier 
social  superstructures  upon  the  Normal  Social  Life 
such  as  we  find  in  India.  It  multiplies  to  infinity  the 
possibilities  of  misunderstanding,  jealousy,  hatred, 
and  dissension.  We  cannot  here  consider  the  his- 
torical aspect  of  specialisation  in  detail,  but  a  general 
survey  indicates  that  it  originated  in  the  segregation 
of  the  rulers,  warriors,  priests,  traders,  and  slaves 
who  until  recent  years  formed  the  backbone  of  prac- 
tically every  human  community.  The  caste  S3''stem 
of  India  originated  in  this  manner  some  three 
thousand  years  ago,  developing  in  course  of  time  into 
the  most  elaborate  system  of  specialisation  on  record ; 
and  nowhere  is  the  Normal  Social  Life  more  firmly 
rooted  as  the  common  way  of  living  and  its  tradition 
as  the  universal  tradition  than  in  India.  It  must, 
however,  be  clearly  understood  that  specialisation 
is  not  necessarily  peculiar  to  the  Normal  Social  Life. 
There  can  be  few  ideas  more  prevalent  than  those  of 
domination,  subordination,  and  specialisation;  and 
since  the  ideas  with  which  humanity  is  most  familiar 
have  a  strong  tendency  to  perpetuation  it  is  con- 
ceivable that  the  persistence  of  these  ideas  into  a 
period  of  change  and  comprehensive  reconstruction 
may  yet  lead  to  a  social  order  in  which  the  bulk 
of  humanity  will  be  almost  as  specialised  in  function 
as  the  wheels  and  levers  of  a  machine,  and  subordi- 

372 


THE   TRADITION   OF  THE  GREAT  STATE 

nated  to  and  co-ordinated  by  a  small  class  of  wealthy, 
vigorous,  and  probably  truculent  overseers  and  "un- 
derstanding persons" — in  short,  a  Servile  State.  If, 
therefore,  we  are  to  escape  both  from  the  evils  of  the 
Normal  Social  Life  and  from  those  of  the  possible 
Servile  State,  we  must  systematically  encourage 
forces  adverse  to  specialisation  of  individuals.  A 
tradition  of  liberalism  and  criticism  must  be  con- 
sciously sustained.  Granting  that  in  the  Great 
State  each  citizen  will  be  brought  into  contact  with 
the  broadening  influence  of  a  catholic  tradition,  it  is 
possible  there  will  be  no  specialists  at  all  in  the  or- 
dinary sense  of  the  word.  That  there  may  be  a  degree 
of  specialisation  in  certain  lives  is  quite  probable. 
Not  only  has  knowledge  grown  beyond  the  possi- 
bilities of  individual  intellectual  grasp,  but  always 
there  are  men  who  at  an  early  age  show  predilections 
for  a  certain  class  of  work;  and  in  so  far  as  they 
excel  in  that  work  they  will,  no  doubt,  be  specialists. 
But  this  need  not  involve,  as  it  so  often  involves 
now,  the  atrophy  of  all  those  possibilities  of  de- 
velopment not  brought  to  bear  on  the  matter  im- 
mediately in  hand.  A  man  will  be  able  to  specialise 
and  yet  remain  a  man.  The  tradition  of  his  time 
and  education,  the  new  tradition  of  the  Great  State, 
will  have  fitted  him  to  tackle  widely  differing 
classes  of  work ;  and  even  if  he  devotes  his  life  to  one 
field  of  narrowed  limits  determined  by  his  special 
capacity,  he  will  still  have  a  sympathetic  under- 
standing  of   those   activities  which   lie   beyond  his 

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SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

self-imposed  range.  With  the  normal  run  of  human- 
ity, however,  it  seems  probable  that  change  of  work 
from  time  to  time  will  give  the  best  results  for  both 
the  individual  in  happiness  and  for  the  community  in 
product.  It  is  extremely  doubtful  whether  any  man 
is  a  good  and  happy  specialist  all  his  life,  any  more 
than  he  can  always  be  a  good  and  happy  lover. 
Even  a  lifetime  wholly  of  work,  albeit  enlivened 
and  enlarged  by  repeated  changes  of  occupation,  will 
probably  be  considered  as  regrettable  in  the  Great 
State.  To  work,  as  to  love,  is  but  a  phase  in  man's 
development.  A  balanced  attitude  towards  life 
demands  lengthy  intervals  of  leisure,  time  for 
travel  and  recreation,  periods  devoted  to  thought 
and  exercise,  days  of  solitude  and  contemplation. 
Stevenson  has  pointed  out  that  extreme  busyness 
is  a  symptom  of  deficient  vitality,  and  that  a  faculty 
for  idleness — as  opposed  to  the  exercise  of  some  con- 
ventional occupation — implies  a  catholic  appetite  and 
a  strong  sense  of  personal  identity.  This  is  pro- 
foundly true;  and  to  concentrate  the  whole  or  even 
the  greater  part  of  a  lifetime  on  any  one  aspect  of  life 
to  the  complete  or  partial  neglect  of  all  others  is  a 
waste  of  potentialities  and  by  so  much  essentially 
a  failure  to  live. 

It  seems  to  the  present  writer  that  there  is  a  cer- 
tain cycle  of  efficiency  for  the  average  human  being. 
Every  man's  development  as  a  worker  appears  to 
follow  some  law  of  accumulation  and  fatigue  which 
involves  first  a  period  of  interest  combined  with  a 

374 


THE  TRADITION  OF  THE  GREAT  STATE 

certain  lack  of  dexterity,  then  an  interval  of  maxi- 
mum interest  and  maximum  efficiency,  followed  at 
length  by  a  decline  towards  routine.  Interest  in 
most  cases  begins  to  flag  before  efficiency  shows 
any  serious  signs  of  falling  away,  for  after  work 
has  been  well  executed  for  a  number  of  years  me- 
chanical aptitude  may  keep  one  going,  though  fresh- 
ness and  zeal  have  departed.  An  interesting  side 
issue  here  would  be  to  consider  whether,  generally 
speaking,  our  judges,  bishops,  admirals,  and  generals 
are  not  appointed  at  a  period  of  life  when  fire  and 
enthusiasm  are  declining  and  a  certain  staleness  and 
secondary  inefficiency  are  setting  in.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  there  comes  to  most  specialists  a  time  when 
they  are  glad  to  retire  from  the  work  to  which 
they  have  devoted  the  greater  portion  of  their  lives. 
But  this  by  no  means  necessarily  indicates  that  their 
energies  are  exhausted.  They  are  tired  of  their 
specialty,  and  at  last  comes  a  reaching-out  to  other 
things  about  which  to  centre  their  activities.  Such 
names  as  Mr.  Balfour,  Lord  Rosebery,  and  Sir 
Frederic  Treves  may  be  cited  as  British  instances  of 
this  cessation  of  interests  in  a  special  occupation. 
The  last  is  a  particularly  good  example  of  a  man  who, 
having  attained  to  an  extreme  eminence  as  a  surgeon, 
retired  deliberately  while  still  in  the  prime  of  life 
to  travel,  to  write,  to  become  a  more  generalised 
man. 

Now,  bearing  In  mind  the  ample  tradition  and 
education  of   the   Great   State   and   the  fact   that 

375 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

mechanism  and  co-ordinated  effort  will  have  reduced 
the  unavoidable  work  for  each  individual  to  a  few 
hours  a  day,  it  is  not  difficult  to  imagine  a  man 
under  these  conditions  spending  a  portion  of  his 
leisure  in  familiarising  himself  with  the  details  of 
some  occupation  other  than  that  primarily  engaging 
his  attention.  As  interest  in  his  earlier  occupation 
relatively  or  actually  declines  and  proficiency  in  the 
new  increases,  the  latter  becomes  the  chief  medium 
for  the  exercise  of  his  faculties.  Thus  the  normal 
citizen  in  the  Great  State  may  range  over  very  wide 
fields  of  work  indeed,  broadening  in  outlook  and 
understanding,  growing  in  sympathy  and  toleration. 
And  I  think  in  all  discussions  as  this  there  is  too 
strong  a  disposition  to  that  idea  of  a  three  or  four 
hour  working  day.  Why  not  a  ten-year  working 
life? — and  do  it  jolly  and  hard  while  you  are 
at  it? 

It  may  be  argued  that  the  result  of  such  a  reduc- 
tion of  specialisation  as  I  am  suggesting  would  be  a 
community  of  incompetent  amateurs.  Such  an  argu- 
ment ignores  the  fact  that  the  very  possibility  of  a 
Great  State  postulates  a  wealth  of  tradition  and  edu- 
cation available  for  each  citizen,  thus  insuring  knowl- 
edge and  thoroughness  being  applied  to  whatever 
work  is  taken  in  hand.  No  doubt  there  may  be 
differences  in  quality  of  output.  Work  may  be 
crudely  done  here,  elaborately  and  beautifully  fin- 
ished there.  This  does  not  invalidate  our  general 
proposition. 

376 


THE   TRADITION  OF  THE   GREAT  STATE 

At  the  present  time  there  is  far  too  general  an 
acquiescence  in  the  specialisation  of  individuals. 
Common  people  are  dazzled  by  the  brilliant  light 
often  focussed  by  the  specialist  on  his  specialty; 
they  forget  the  worlds  which,  lying  beyond  the  range 
of  his  imaginative  grasp,  the  specialist  cannot  realise. 
And  they  fail  to  understand  that  a  community  of 
specialists  must  inevitably  lack  collective  vision  and 
understanding  by  reason  of  the  inco-ordination  of 
its  units.  The  specialist  may  take  you  nearer  the 
Great  State  in  all  sorts  of  ways,  but  it  is  very  doubt- 
ful if  he  will  ever  get  you  or  himself  there.  No 
attempt  is  being  made  to  study  the  possible  reac- 
tions of  specialisation  on  the  human  mind.  One 
thinks  of  specialists  who  are  secretive  and  cunning, 
of  specialised  business  men  who  prefer  to  work  behind 
the  scenes  and  who  delight  in  letters  that  are  "private 
and  confidential."  One  thinks  of  the  artful  bureau- 
cratic expert  and  the  dull  but  crafty  and  intriguing 
diplomat.  How  far  is  all  this  "foxiness"  mere  co- 
incidence, and  how  far  is  it  a  necessary  characteristic 
of  specialisation?  This  is  but  one  of  a  countless 
number  of  such  questions  that  must  be  answered  on 
our  way  to  the  Great  State.  For  his  own  part  the 
writer  cannot  conceive  any  sort  of  Great  State  that 
will  endure  a  year,  where  education,  where  tradition, 
does  not  first  make  its  citizen  a  gentleman,  and 
then,' in  a  relation  entirely  secondary,  a  specialised 
worker. 

But  already  this  discussion  of  specialisation  has 

377 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE 

been  carried  beyond  the  limits  of  this  paper.  That  so 
much  contemporary  writing  expresses  the  conviction 
that  any  possible  future  state  must  be  dominated  by 
specialists  and  officials  (using  the  words  in  their 
generally  accepted  sense  of  narrow  concentration) 
will  perhaps  serve  as  an  adequate  excuse.  The 
writer  firmly  believes  in  the  possibility  of  a  Great 
State  which  will  include  neither  official  as  such  nor 
specialist  as  such,  a  state  in  which  this  that  he  here 
throws  out  so  sketchily  will  probably  have  been  fully 
worked  out ;  but  he  also  believes  that,  without  hav- 
ing at  its  base  some  such  tradition  and  education  as 
he  has  indicated,  no  Great  State  can  possibly  exist. 
Amplification  of  tradition,  increasing  enlargement  of 
the  means  of  communication,  together  with  educa- 
tion developed  to  these  ends,  forming  a  foundation 
for  vigorous,  subtle,  and  all-embracing  thought — 
these  are  our  fundamental  needs.  Herein  lie  the 
seeds  of  unparalleled  greatness,  possibilities  of  devel- 
opment leading  to  ways  of  life  more  splendid  than  all 
our  dreams. 

Is  it  possible  to  haye  a  world  of  men  such  that 
merely  to  live  in  it  were  a  liberal  education?  The 
question  is  already  answered.  We  of  this  book  say: 
on  certain  conditions,  yes.  Dimly  we  perceive  the 
road  which,  leading  thither,  winds  darkly  outwards 
across  the  centuries.  There  are  ways  leading  else- 
where; humanity  may  take  the  wrong  turning,  and 
may  yet  be  overwhelmed  in  a  Red  Sea  of  petty, 
trivial,  immediate  things.     There  are  times,  indeed, 

378 


THE  TRADITION   OF  THE  GREAT  STATE 

when  lack  of  faith  gives  the  Ke  to  one's  hopes  and 
the  vision  of  a  Great  State  wavers  and  fades.  .  .  . 

The  permutations  of  hfe's  possibiHties  are  beyond 
our  telHng.  But  this  at  least  we  steadfastly  believe : 
there  is  no  insuperable  barrier  between  mankind  and 
the  goal  of  our  desire. 


THE    END 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA    000  388  694    2 


